SIR: In their letter to the Chronicle last week, John Andrews and Hilary Thomas cast doubt on petitions hosted through online platforms such as ours on 38degrees. Whilst it is correct to note that such petitions can be signed by ‘anyone, anywhere’ , it is incorrect to assume this is necessarily the case. Social distancing and other Covid measures meant that it was not possible to gather support by any means but for the record, at the time of writing, over 1,530 people have signed our petition. Unsurprisingly as this is an important local issue more than 99.9 per cent of this support has come from people living in Winchester itself or the surrounding villages. Only half a dozen or so are from those outside the immediate locality.

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As many have previously said in this paper and elsewhere, it is not just Worthy Lane that has been adversely affected by the closure. The vehicles no longer using Hyde Street are now following council diversion signs into Worthy Lane, Andover Road and City Road in each direction leading to increased congestion including that through the notoriously busy Carfax junction.

It is in all our interests to cut the volume of traffic on our roads but to simply shift the traffic from one key ‘B’ road onto others is not the way to achieve this.

Steve Harbourne,

Worthy Lane,

Hyde,

Winchester