This letter is my response to the above consultation. I am responding in a personal capacity, and not as an agent of any other person or organisation.

1. Mitcham's Corner is, above all, a road junction. It carries a large volume of motor traffic each day. At peak times there are moderately-long queues of traffic waiting to enter the junction via all five road entrances. Any reduction in its throughput for motor traffic would lengthen these queues, which in turn would adversely affect surrounding areas.

1.1. The "Vision and Strategic Objectives" laid out in Figure 5 (page 11) do not say anything about maintaining or improving the junction's throughput for motor traffic. This is a grave oversight. The list of Strategic Objectives in Figure 5 should include (at least) maintaining, or (preferably) increasing the junction's motor traffic throughput.

1.2. Despite relentless criticism of the present gyratory system throughout the draft SPD, and a clearly-stated objective to abolish it, the authors do concede that the "Gyratory handles high traffic levels well" (section 2.4.1, p22). The document says that a "Key Objective" for remodelling the gyratory is to "Maintain sufficient capacity and flows through and around the area" (section 3.4.2, p34). However, this objective is neither prominent enough, nor strongly-enough stated. The adjective "sufficient" is subjective, and provides wriggle room for planners to reduce the junction's throughput while asserting that this is still somehow "sufficient". The objective in section 3.4.2 should therefore be changed to "Maintain or increase motor traffic capacity through and around the area".

2. The draft SPD contains no hard data on what volume of traffic currently uses the junction, nor any simulation data to show how the proposed abolition of the gyratory outlined in Figure 27 (p33) would affect the junction's throughput. Both are severe oversights, and must be corrected. Without this information, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the desirability (or otherwise) of the SPD.