A595 Liaison Group
CCC's Copeland area committee's Highways Working Group has an A595 liaison group which met in Lillyhall today bringing together representatives of the County Council and Highways England to discuss issues involving the road.
Councillors and officials discussed how we can ensure due priority is given to the measures necessary to improve and maintain the A595 through Copeland and what we can do to facilitate and bring forward some of the action needed.
Specific issues discussed included
1) The A595 Moresby embankment issue, both proposals and contingency plans
2) The Whitehaven Major Transport Improvement Scheme - this is expected to go to public consultation later this year, probably in the autumn.
3) Initial proposals to improve the Scalegill Road and High House Road junctions with the A595 at Moor Row
The good news is that this has moved forward a bit: the bad news is that the timetable for action is slower than I or, more importantly, local residents will have hoped. At the moment Highways England are looking at feasibility design work in 2018/19, detailed design and consultation in 2019/20 and if all goes to plan work might start in 2020/21.
The meeting also discussed a range of other issues including the resilience issues affecting the A595, Travel plans, road markings and traffic flows on the Distington by-pass on the approach to the Moresby roundabout, and the government consultations currently under way.
Sadly getting anything done in local and national government can be a painfully slow process. Things do seem to be moving, if at much slower rate than most of us would like and we have to keep up the pressure to keep them moving.
Councillors and officials discussed how we can ensure due priority is given to the measures necessary to improve and maintain the A595 through Copeland and what we can do to facilitate and bring forward some of the action needed.
Specific issues discussed included
1) The A595 Moresby embankment issue, both proposals and contingency plans
2) The Whitehaven Major Transport Improvement Scheme - this is expected to go to public consultation later this year, probably in the autumn.
3) Initial proposals to improve the Scalegill Road and High House Road junctions with the A595 at Moor Row
The good news is that this has moved forward a bit: the bad news is that the timetable for action is slower than I or, more importantly, local residents will have hoped. At the moment Highways England are looking at feasibility design work in 2018/19, detailed design and consultation in 2019/20 and if all goes to plan work might start in 2020/21.
The meeting also discussed a range of other issues including the resilience issues affecting the A595, Travel plans, road markings and traffic flows on the Distington by-pass on the approach to the Moresby roundabout, and the government consultations currently under way.
Sadly getting anything done in local and national government can be a painfully slow process. Things do seem to be moving, if at much slower rate than most of us would like and we have to keep up the pressure to keep them moving.
Comments
The CCC Highways offices for West Cumbria, which are located very close to the border between Copeland and Allerdale but happen to be a few hundred yards on the Allerdale side, were the most convenient place to hold the meeting.
If it had been a formal committee which meets in public we would probably have held it in a public venue somewhere like Cleator Moor but that would have cost taxpayers' money and there really wasn't any point spending that money for a working group.
Any county councillor for a division in Copeland or most of the rest of Cumbria spends many hours and clocks up hundreds of miles a month travelling to Carlisle or Kendal and back for meetings. That is not a complaint, it comes with the territory and I knew what I was letting myself in for when I stood for election. I mention it only for context.
And in that context, when you're used to having to make regular trips to Carlisle or Kendal and back, popping up to Lillyhall from Whitehaven is no big deal in comparison.
I'm sure my colleagues from Millom and Holmrook will appreciate your concern for their welfare. As they are respectively the Vice Chairman and Chairman of the group, I suspect they could have made their views felt if they were really bothered about it.
When you are member of a local authority with the size and geographical issues affecting travel of Cumbria, a substantial amount of travel time comes with the job, and wherever you hold the meetings, most county councillors will have to clock up some time getting there. As I said before, this is not a complaint, we all knew what we were letting ourselves in for when we stood for election.
Where the meeting concerned is a highways one, the silver lining to this cloud is that at least it gives the people responsible for the highways an idea of the state and degree of congestion of the transport network they are responsible for.
I am generally in favour of moving meetings round the area covered by a council or other geographically based body so that different people get the turn to have the meeting in their own patch. The priority, however, is to extend this to meetings which the public can attend.