Your elected councillors for Hindmarsh secured funding for community consultation with Ovingham and the broader public in the 2025/26 budget.

The key purpose of this engagement is to understand experiences of Gilbert Street from those who live in or regularly visit or travel through the street. Two key focus areas are hearing from community about street trees and greening, and how people travel or move through the street.

This engagement initiative came about due to requests from the local community to consider options to improve tree canopy and review traffic movement in Gilbert Street.

• More street trees planted, but a new type of tree to what's in the street at the moment.
• Replacement of all existing street-trees with a new tree type.
• Improved pedestrian safety and access (eg path connections)
• Plant large canopy trees within the roadway by removing selected on-street parking spaces.
• Built treatments (like pinch points or built-out kerbs) that could both slow traffic and allow larger trees or greening in the street. This solution could be possible by potentially converting some of the existing on-street parking bays to garden and/or large-tree beds. Thanks to the large width of the road, this would not have a significant impact to on-street parking.

The budget for this investigation will only cover the cost of this consultation, which is about collecting feedback and ideas only.

There are no plans or funding available to support immediate improvements to Gilbert Street. There is also no commitment that the findings of this engagement will result in immediate or future works in the street.

The first step for us is investigating local and community views about amenity and movement in Gilbert Street. The outcomes of what we hear will help us to understand what's important and will support future planning and prioritisation of projects in the Ovingham area.

While there is no funding or plans to change anything in Gilbert Street right now, your feedback will help staff and the elected councillors for Hindmarsh understand community preferences for the street and what’s most important to you.

We will report on what we heard and summarise the key outcomes of the engagement activity in a Community Engagement Report. This report could be used to highlight opportunities or inform plans to improve Gilbert Street in the future.

We can then work to understand the cost and budget required to deliver identified and supported improvements for Gilbert Street, which will allow funding opportunities or sources to be investigated.

If funding is secured or can be made available in future, we could prioritise one or more identified improvements in Gilbert Street for delivery or potentially deliver improvements that align with other projects scheduled in the area.