Bond Street La(i)ne ePetition update

This petition is now ended with 50 signatories and a response has been received from the Council. This informs that to implement a change of street name the council has to carry out a consultation process which requires notices to be displayed on the street under Section 18 of the Public Health Act 1925. The notices are to remain in place for at least 1 month before a change of name can be implemented.

Any person or persons objecting to the name change has the right of appeal to the magistrate's court within 21 days of posting of the notice.

If an appeal is made to the magistrate's court, the local authority must wait until that appeal is heard before a name change can take place.

If no appeal is made the name can be officially changed and a new nameplate erected.

In order to begin the consultation process an application must be made by a member of the public to the Street Naming and Numbering (SNN) Officer, ICT SmartSpace, Hove Town Hall.

The petition was not, of course, about a renaming but the correction of a spelling error. The Complete Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1989, makes this point quite clear. It gives the following definitions:-

laine: A name given to certain tracts of arable land at the foot of the Sussex Downs.

Whereas:-

lane: is "a narrow way between hedges or banks, a narrow road or street between houses or walls, a bye-way."

It is an open-and-shut case that an appropriate name for this passage-way leading off Bond Street, and lying within the area known as North Laine is "Bond Street Lane". The presence or absence of an "i" may seem to some people a minor matter but it is also regrettable that the misuse and consequent devaluation of a word should be perpetuated in permanent official street signs. Unfortunately there are legal ramifications which require the Council to follow the set procedure even in this case. In other words the Council cannot correct its own mistakes unless formally requested to do so by a member of the public.