The parish council wants to improve access from the growing Newton Road area to the amenities at the centre of Whittlesford (ie the shop, the school, the play areas and recreation ground). The current route along Moorfield Rd and over the triangle there and up North Rd has been considered and the idea is to put a path across the triangle itself as there aren't any footpaths along the roads there. It will help road safety for cars coming round the corners from Rayners Farm which is a sharp turn.
The parish council has decided to pay for this, and last Sept finally decided to ask the county council to carry out the work, using their contractors. Before then there had been some discussion about whether to use a different contractor and pay a returnable deposit in to the county in case of problems with the standard of work.
I have been chasing the county council hard on this, because they have been stalling on when they could give a start date for the project. Queries about this seemed to disappear into the equivalent of the Bermuda triangle (geddit?) and so I have taken this up with the county head of projects and he has personally agrred to take this forward. The county say that their own planned programme of works has to come first before third party proposals, and there is some truth in that, because the county's work programme is the essential repairs and improvements for our roads.
But what I have said to the county on this issue is that if you want to push "community resilience" and having people doing more things for themselves, you have to make it easier for that to happen, especially when the village is paying for it. Community resilience for me includes projects like self-funding village health support, or helping keep people out of the social care system by providing more volunteer support locally, but it also includes some good infrastructure projects like this one.
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