Introduction

Lower Middle Street has plenty of opportunities for improvement, and with the work that The Martin Group will be doing on Glovers Walk, this could be a great asset and fantastic area for Yeovil.

Key changes

We’ve picked out five key changes to the area that you will see once work is completed:

• Rain garden planting – We want to introduce sustainable urban drainage principles in this area to provide additional tree and ornamental planting to help make this area of town more attractive. Feedback during consultation on the public realm told us you wanted to see more greenery in the town centre, so we are introducing new street planting in a lot of the public realm areas. This will help to brighten the area up and also help with taking in CO2 and providing oxygen. Street planting also helps with land drainage and provides a habitat for wildlife.
• Improved street lighting and new bench seating – Improved street lighting in this public realm area will help with decreasing anti-social behaviour by ensuring it is well lit. Benches also offer an opportunity for people to take a break from shopping.
• Flexible paving space – Flexible paving space will help to facilitate markets and other events. This is important to ensure that we adapt our high streets in the town centre to fit and suit the needs of users and visitors. We want to make Yeovil town centre a place where people can enjoy their shopping.
• New and improved natural stone paving – With the rest of the town centre, we want to make sure the town centre flows so will be introducing new and improved natural stone paving in this area so that it all joins up with the other public realm improvement schemes we will be completing. It helps to give a better look and quality finish to the town.
• Potential new gateway feature – We will be potentially installing a new gateway feature at the bottom of Lower Middle Street to welcome pedestrians into the town centre from that end of town. We are yet to finalise this decision but it’s something we feel the town centre could benefit from to make it more appealing to visitors and users.