Dear editor, regarding the story on speed limits with Cllr Dillow expressing his opinion on the development of Manydown. Once again, he is too late to the issue on this one.

This issue of traffic for the Manydown development isn’t a recent issue.

I have spoken a number of times about this to the Manydown Overview Committee and on multiple occasions this has gone unheard by the Conservatives and the project team.

There are nearly 1,000 homes that rely on Roman Road to be able to get in and out of Winklebury on a daily basis.

READ MORE: Cllr Sean Dillow calls for 20mph speed limit outside schools

The first main road that they hit is that road. For nearly 1,400 people, there is no other option, such as rat-running through other roads, to get into or out of their homes.

For a minimum of three years the council plans to send all site traffic, that’s HGV’s and contractor vehicles, down Roman Road and in to a site entrance at the junction of Winklebury Way and Roman Road.

It’s very obvious what will end up happening in this situation, roads that cut through the Clarke Estate, Wellington Terrance and Tiverton Road to the south of Winklebury will likely see a rise in rat-running extending this issue to hundreds more homes and the families and residents that live in them.

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It’s all good and well Cllr Dillow looking to get the traffic constrained to off-peak times to reduce the impact but if he knew his ward he would be well aware of how busy this road is both in and out of peak hours and for many of the elderly residents in the area, who want to get around the community out of peak hours, Roman Road already is an issue for them.

Having site traffic going down Roman Road is simply not the common sense approach to this issue. If anything the idea of restricting it to certain times could see traffic queuing up to get in to the site in the morning and there isn’t anywhere along that road for this to happen.

After listening to residents, Cllr Angie Freeman and I have tried to work with the committee to get a change to the main access for the Manydown development with the aim of getting them to open up the site to the north (along the A339 Kingsclere Road) first and build a connecting trunk road through to the south of the site on the B3400 where the other access point is proposed to be built as part of phase one. This is the most sensible option and it is the reason why we have been out on the doors speaking to people about the issue and getting signatures on both a physical and online petition, that has well over 200 names on it already, (www.change.org/p/the-cabinet-members-of-basingstoke-deane-borough-council-build-the-northern-access-to-the-manydown-development-first) that we intend to deliver to the council at the full council meeting in February.

You can see from some of the comments on there that residents are not impressed.

Unfortunately, it would seem that once again, Cllr Dillow and the local Conservative Party are not listening to local residents about the issues that matter to them.

Alex Lee

Labour Party Candidate for Winklebury and Manydown

 

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