St Kilda Road/ Campkin Road Potholes

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;

Roadworks In King's Hedges (and across Cambridgeshire)

Cambridgeshire County Council's Highways Department are currently proposing (plant and weather permitting) to perform some surface dressing of some of the more badly damaged roads across Cambridgeshire.

I've attached the County-wide details here (PDF).

Of particular interest to residents in King's Hedges will be the work starting on the 4th June to fix up Northfield Avenue between Campkin Road and King's Hedges Road.

As you can see in this picture taken just before the last election the previous round of street repairs have left the road in a far better technical condition (some of the potholes were beginning to be real danger to cyclists) but looking less than ideal.

Hopefully the work later this week will address this. 

Resurfacing King's Hedges Road

A very welcome email arrived yesterday: the atrocious state of King's Hedges Road has been acknowledged and money found to do the work to resurface it.

Unfortunately this is at very short notice: the work starts tomorrow (April 7th) and will cause some disruption for the week it is ongoing.

The email says...

We have been given some funding to resurface a section of the carriageway on Kings Hedges Road Cambridge . The section is from number 19 to a point just past Garry Drive, this is a plane out and inlay scheme and should take no longer than a week to complete, commencing this Thursday 7 April 2011 . We are sorry about the short notice, a letter drop has taken place today to inform all the local residents within the works area.

Obviously this is just one of the roads needing work, and we will continue to ask for more repairs to be made. Let us know of any potholes and we will do what we can to get them fixed.

Street Repairs to Speed Humps on Campkin Road

As I'm sure you are aware if you have been travelling around the County lately another hard winter has passed and the effect on some parts of the road network have been to cause serious damage.

The pictures on the right and below show the effects the winter, not to mention tens of thousands of motor vehicles, have had on the old brick speed humps on Campkin Road (just outside Arbury Community Centre).

The County Councils highways team have already been active in the area and most of this damage has already been repaired but, as this report shows (courtesy of Fix My Street), the poor level or maintenance of the roads is causing more and more problems to appear.

If you are out and about and you see anything that is causing you concern then please report it. Money is very stretched at the moment and they certainly won't be fixing anything they don't know about ...

You can report items via FixMyStreet (click here),  or directly to the County Council (click here for the online form, or via the phone number 0345 045 5200). If you have already reported an issue to the County Council and it hasn't been resolved to your satisfaction please get in touch and I'll pursue it..

Gritting - Update from the County Council

Last night the gritters were out across the County (seen pictured here on Arbury Road) gritting the major routes.

Due to the shortage of supplies, Cambridgeshire County Council now only has 5 days worth of salt left (on the basis of not doing any secondary work), and due to the worsening salt situation in the North of England and Scotland there is every possibility that new salt will need to be directed to those regions first.

On Monday there will be a review of the precautionary gritting regime to ensure that the most essential roads continue to be gritted - new salt deliveries are still expected, but could still be redirected Nationally.

As we saw last year and after the brief freeze in December cold weather damages the surface of roads and creates new potholes as well as making existing ones worse. If you are aware of any problems in your area (or on your daily commute) please notify the County Council via the website or via the contact centre on 0345 045 5212 (contact centre is open 8.00 am-8.00 pm, Monday to Saturday). Cllr Mac McGuire (the Cabinet Member Responsible) has given an assurance that they will be repaired as soon as resources and weather conditions allow.