A ROAD improvement scheme, which is planned for the Frogmore Road/Slag Lane area of town, should be looked at again for further consideration, agreed councillors at a recent meeting.
Since the growth of housing development in that area, issues of safety for pedestrians due to increased and speeding traffic have been highlighted. In August, councillors agreed to an improvement scheme, but since then, local people have been critical of the plans, saying they do not go far enough.
At a meeting of the town council’s highways, planning & development committee, they were asked whether the scheme should be reviewed in light of recent public opinion. In August, the committee was asked, and supported a 30% (£1,200) contribution towards the CATG (Community Area Transport Group) contribution of £4,000. CATG has since made a substantive bid for these works and the outcome of the bid is yet to be confirmed.
Speaking at the meeting held on 15th November, a member of the public, Mrs Evans, raised several safety issues including the problem of parked cars in Frogmore Lane and Slag Lane and whether anything is being done.
Chair of the committee, cllr Mike Sutton said that they could not change the improvement scheme which was decided in August, but if councillors felt that further changes should be made, they could ask CATG to revisit the scheme.
Cllr Ward Jones said, “We spent a lot of time debating.” He explained that the issue of safety was of prior importance and said the council had responded to appeals from people living in Slag Lane. “They asked for a scheme to be put forward and we produced that scheme,” he said. Cllr Jones said that more recently, local people were asking for speed monitoring and said councillors should help with that issue.
Cllr Gordon King agreed, and added that people did support the scheme at the time. He said “The request from those residents was to make Frogmore Road safer and a better shared space use for pedestrians and vehicles. This scheme does that entirely, it raises protection for pedestrians and reduces the speed limit from 30 to 20mph, increasing safety throughout.”
Councillors then discussed other configurations of road access and signage which might discourage speeding cars.
Summing up, cllr Sutton said he had sympathy with local residents asking for change. “Developers should have foreseen this at the planning process when the Slag Lane development was built,” he said. “What used to be a country lane where people used to walk down with prams to feed the ducks has now become a rat run, with cars from the industrial estate taking a short cut through the town.”
Cllr Jones reiterated that it was an issue of safety, especially for parents with young children. Councillors agreed that they would ask CATG to revisit the plan, bearing in mind the comments that the committee and members of the public have made.
