Freight group presses ahead with measures to reduce HCV impact

Freight group presses ahead with measures to reduce HCV impact

Published 20 September 2017

A group formed to reduce the impact heavy commercial vehicles on Staffordshire’s roads is set to deliver a package of measures to benefit communities along one of the county’s main routes.

The Staffordshire Freight and Communities Forum met on Friday with a specific focus on reducing HCV impact along the A515, affecting the villages of Draycott-in-the-Clay, Yoxall and Kings Bromley. The group, which includes parish council representatives, the county council, Highways England, police and the fire service, agreed to deliver the measures as soon as possible.

Options being considered include new signs to advise HCV drivers that the route is unsuitable for them, engineering improvements such as build-outs on parts of the route and looking at restricting HVC movements onto the A515, such as from the A513.

The forum also agreed to write to all Staffordshire MPs to ask for their support in lobbying the Government to address issues resulting from national freight policy. It will continue to look for solutions to issues in other parts of the county at future meetings.

Staffordshire County Council’s cabinet member responsible for highways and transport Mark Deaville said: “Friday’s meeting was hugely positive and enabled us to make great progress towards delivering measures which we hope will make a real difference. Our highways officers drew up a highly detailed report with a number of options, with considerable input from the parish councils to which we are very grateful. It means we will be in a position to take action as soon as possible to begin to address some of the community concerns. There has been a great deal of necessary process to get to this stage, so we’re pleased now to get things started. We will of course monitor the impact of everything we do. We know these measures won’t fix everything, but we’re certainly moving in the right direction.”

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