THE closure of Hyde Street has been the most contentious road closure since that of College Street and Kingsgate Arch in the early 1990s.

Hampshire County Council is set to make a decision on July 29. The county council is Conservative-controlled and the city council, which supports the closure experiment, is run by the Lib Dems. Both appear to favour the closure which was introduced when Central Government gave some money for Covid social distancing measures last year. The Hyde Street closure is needed to enable North Walls to be reduced to a single lane, freeing up more space for people to stay two metres apart.

The Chronicle believes that whilst anything to help social distancing, questionable in this case, is laudable the price being paid in increased congestion on surrounding roads is too high. Some might say that the Covid social distancing explanation is a smokescreen for the real reason, which is to try to deter car usage in the city centre. The residents of Hyde Street will be unhappy to lose their much quieter road but the impact elsewhere of continuing closure makes that a luxury.