Review of the Temporary Restriction Orders on the A515.

Review of the Temporary Restriction Orders on the A515.

Published 26 September 2019

…. yesterday which Steve Browne and Allan Howard attended. This is part of the promised review. A number of issues were covered.

1. Reduction in HGV traffic. The Parish Councils of Kings Bromley and Yoxall reported that HGV traffic had reduced significantly on the A515 and A513. A much smaller reduction has been seen through Draycott. The cameras which have recently been put up along the A515 are doing the count which will provide the objective evidence of the extent of this reduction. This information will be made available to the Parish Councils in the next few weeks.

2. Exemptions. The Parish Councils raised this issue and urged County Highways to make exemptions on the weight restricted turns for farm vehicles and local deliveries. They are already actively looking into this, having already had representations from the NFU. There are some technical difficulties involved but it does look as though this will happen.

3. Enforcement. While the police have been present at times at the turns and lorries have been stopped it has not been possible to get them to provide information on the extent of this and the number of prosecutions made. It was agreed that the most effective way of enforcing the ban is through direct contact with those companies seen to be flouting the law. This effort, undertaken by the Parish Councils and YTAG has been very successful with many companies such as Shell, Wincanton and Lomas committing not only to obeying the weight restricted turns but also to not using the A515 at all. YTAG have just added to this list JCB and its contractors. We encourage parishioners to send details of offending vehicles to me alan.how8@btinternet.com so that I can contact the companies involved. To help in this we are also pursuing the use of cameras on the junctions.

4. Signage. County Highways are looking at ways to improve the weight restriction signage, especially their encouraging Highways England to install signs on the A50 and A38 warning HGVs before they get onto the A515 and A38.

5. Further work. The continuing objective of the Parish Councils is to get a weight limit on the A515 between Woodend Lane and Stubby Lane. The displacement of up to 70% of the A515 HGV traffic has not caused any problems on the A38, A50 or even Eastern Avenue. The total ban seems to be next logical step since HGVs can still use the road through Yoxall which is totally unfit for them. County Highways response to this was that the problem with such a weight restriction is to do with the difficulty on enforcement, not the displacement of traffic. We do not believe that this is an insuperable problem so our next step will be to take up this issue through our District and County Councillors. We have no doubt that, failing this, the restriction order will be made permanent.