Street naming policy changed in Torriddge

100 year rule reduced to 10 in contentious street naming policy

Torridge will no longer have to wait a century to name a street after a significant person in the community who has died.

The contentious subject of street naming has new rules after Torridge District Council agreed to freshen up its policy for the first time in 15 years, and cut the time someone can have a street named in their honour to just 10 years.

The 100-year rule had been put in place previously to stop issues after people claimed it could cause disagreements and confusion.

But Cllr Peter Christie (Green, Bideford North) said he wasn’t even aware of the rule and in some cases streets were named after people who were still alive.

“I’m slightly surprised, I’ve never heard of this idea that you can only name streets after people who have passed on after 100 years.

“We are almost running out of mayors’ names in Bideford. We probably used up 40 years worth of names and no one ever queried it and we even named one street after a person whilst he was still alive…Clifford Coates, the most highly decorated armed forces member we ever had in Bideford.

He was very touched by that.”

Cllr Christie said he had probably named most of the streets in Bideford over the past 35 years and he tried to give them an historical link.

He urged the district council, which makes the final decision on street naming but consult with parish and town councils, to challenge developers who often put forward generic street names with no local connection.

The council’s head of place and communities Sean Kearney, who recommended the 100 years be reduced to 60, said the time limit was there so an appropriate period of time could elapse as it was often a contentious subject.

He said streets should not have been named after someone who died less than 100 years ago or still alive but there had been a number of cases where things had “slipped through the net”.

Cllr Christie proposal to reduce the time to 10 years and was agreed by councillors who also approved a 21-day consultation period with parish and town councils instead of the officers’ 10-day suggestion.