This is just a quick blog post to let you know what we (your local Councillors) can do when things are brought to our attention. In this specific case a local wheelchair-bound resident had noticed significant potholes in the route they took to the local shops (Tesco on Campkin Road).
They raised this issue with the County Council (Highways) and were told that the specific road they were concerned about was not actually a part of the highway and that they, the County, had no idea who owned it but that the resident should try Tesco - this of course wasn't obvious immediately and a lot of frustrating back-and-forth went on before they managed to get to this point.
It was at this stage, feeling incredibly frustrated, the resident contacted me and I started looking into it.
The first thing to note is that the road in question is directly behind the row of shops on Campkin Road. It is where the shops have their "loading bays". When you look at the road itself it is pretty clear that it is not part of the highway, it's generally in a very poor condition and just doesn't (despite what you may think about the way Cambridgeshire County Council looks after their highways) look like a properly maintained road.
If you'd like to see the area in question it's available on Google Streetview
here, and it's the un-named road in the centre of the map
here.
The road itself is off St. Kilda Avenue and from what I know of the area a lot of the shops are owned by Cambridge City Council so I made them my first point of call (rather than Tesco). It actually took quite a number of contacts to identify the person at Cambridge City Council and get an answer to the question of who owned the land.
As you can see from the attached map (which is excellent by the way, produced by the City Council) the land in question was owned by the City Council.
Once it was clear that the potholes were the responsibility of the City Council it was just a matter of asking the correct officer, in this case the Area Housing Manager, to have the area inspected and see what the Council can do.
Within 24 hours of me contacting him the officer had had the area inspected and had concluded that a three square meter area of the road will be resurfaced. Excellent news all round.
Of course it shouldn't have taken this long to get to this stage, but at least it is now well on it's way to being resolved.
So what's the point of this blog post? Well basically it's to let people know that contacting your local Councillors *can* get problems solved. We are here to help you, we know it's not always 100% clear who you should be talking to (City, County, Police, etc) and we can help get to the bottom of local problems whoever they are with.
If you have an issue you'd like us to look into you can contact us via the links on the left.
And, just in case you were wondering, here is the before picture;
