Agenda item

Cllr Mark McClelland – Cabinet Member for Transport, Waste, Street Scene and Flooding, Wiltshire Council and Parvis Khansari – Director Highways & Environment, Wiltshire Council

Cllr Mark McClelland – Cabinet Member for Transport, Waste, Street Scene and Flooding, Wiltshire Council and Parvis Khansari – Director Highways & Environment, Wiltshire Council gave a short slide presentation re Traffic Safety on the A338.

Philip Wilkinson – Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner was also in attendance to outline Community Speedwatch and the new speedwatch camera base and how both could play their part in helping to protect our communities against the threat of speeding.

Points made by the Area Board members and meeting attendees included:

·         That local residents were not convinced that the data presented by Parvis Khansari was very accurate.

·         That it felt that more HGVs were travelling through local villages since Solstice Park came on line as a major distribution centre for Home Bargains and other companies.

·         That this was a very complicated picture with lots of variables.

·         That Home Bargains Lorries continued to drive through the Collingbournes.

·         APNR cameras – who follows up on any actions? - There was a liaison group which local residents could be part of.

·         That Auto Speedwatch when deployed in in Collingbourne Kingston had noted Home Bargains lorries routinely speeding through the local area.

·         What was the point of a weigh restriction limit if HVs still continued to use these roads.

·         That volunteers were becoming increasingly frustrated that no prosecutions seemed to follow from their hard work.

·         That volunteers would appreciate feedback of their hard work to encourage and keep motivation up.

·         That HGVs were sometimes dangerously overtaking.

·         That there had now been three fatalities – this was a dangerous piece of road.

It was agreed:

·         That Parvis Khansari would follow up on why there appeared to be few prosecutions for speeding and weight violations

·         APNR cameras  liaison group – Parvis Khansari to send details of this group to Cllr Chris Williams and Cllr Mark Connolly

·         That a better Speedwatch system would be discussed with the Police and Crime Commissioner utilising the new speedwatch camera base to coordinate things

·         Speedwatch groups/Parish Councils/CATGs/ Area Boards to feed into the process to come up with a collective approach to the speeding and HGV issues in our communities

The Chairman thanked Cllr Mark McClelland and Parvis Khansari for their presentation and attending the meeting.

Comments from Peter Binley - Interim Director of Highways and Transport, Wiltshire Council

With regard to speeding traffic and enforcement on the A338 the Police Community Speedwatch team have indicated that over 2,000 letters have been sent in the last two years. More recently the Community Speedwatch Enforcement officer did attend the A338 in Collingbourne Kingston on 02/02/22 and recorded 42 offences that they are currently working on. It would appear that there is increasing enforcement of the speed limits in Wiltshire and in particular on the A338, but we will of course continue to monitor the issues on this route.

With regard to the National Highways M4 to Dorset Coast Connectivity study, Parvis has advised Cllr Williams that stakeholder engagement was discussed with National Highways at the outset of their study. The study covers a large geographic area covering several Local Authorities, Area Boards, MPs,  hundreds of Parishes, thousands of businesses, freight and bus operators, etc and it would be almost  impossible to engage with each stakeholder. The objective of any stakeholder engagement is to make sure those undertaking the study are informed of relevant issues. The study started by gathering existing data as well as projected pressures due to housing and employment growth. It will be influenced, amongst others, by existing transport investment plans and major emerging policies on climate change and transport decarbonisation. This is why NH consulted “key stakeholders, including local authorities, sub-national transport bodies and local enterprise partnerships“ to assemble the baseline information. In the Executive Summary of the is clear that stakeholders are able to send their “questions and thoughts” to NH using the contact details provided in the document.

Through 2015–20,  BaNES, Wiltshire and Dorset councils formed a corridor alliance to develop a proposition highlighting poor connectivity between the M4 and South Coast. In short, our ‘case for action’ highlighted a lack of suitable north-south links in the strategic network covering large part of south of England formed by a ‘box’ bounded by M5 to the west, A34 to the east, M4 to the North, and the A31/35/Dorset coast to the South. Our respective Leaders, Cabinet Members and officers developed a case for investment towards improvement. That ‘case for action’ was used extensively in lobbying for support, and the stated aim was to secure incorporation of the proposition in RIS2 – more specifically to request the Secretary of State to mandate a ‘strategic study’.

On 12th March 2020, Department for Transport confirmed plans for their next 5 year investment period (RIS2), and in doing so, responded to the significant lobbying by Wiltshire Council, in partnership with BaNES and Dorset Councils. National competition for inclusion in the RIS programme is fierce, and although we always believed we had presented a compelling case, we were very pleased when the Secretary of State confirmed that our proposition would form the basis of a funded strategic study (of only two in the country).

National Highways have commissioned that work, based on the problems and issues set out in our original proposition.

The first stage of that work was to agree the scope of the study area – which as you know includes A338.

The current stage involves gathering initial evidence on existing and future route performance, and we have supplied them with relevant transport and spatial planning data.

Consideration of preferred strategic route(s) and high level consideration of interventions will not take place until later this year.