Saturday’s street surgery at Shoreham Farmer’s market was a busy affair and in a 2- and a quarter hour session I think just about every parent at Swiss Gardens School must have lobbied me and councillors about the problem over secondary school placements which I wrote about last week. On Thursday I will be attending the public meeting they have arranged at the Shoreham Centre and it is likely to be a lively affair.
The other big issue was that the A27 is rubbish, and not just because of the latest congestion caused by the weekend westbound closures for construction of the new roundabout for New Monks Farm. Can I also remind people to respond to the National Highways consultation on the junction tweaks to stress how we need to be much more ambitious if we are to improve traffic flow? Details available here and comments are invited until March 19th.
No one can have failed to see the latest blight of rubbish strewn along the A27 verges from Shoreham well into the City and northwards from the A23 junction as well. It seems to have got particularly bad in the last few weeks. Last year I brought together National Highways responsible for the trunk roads and the local councils who collect the rubbish from the roadside when allowed.
Adur Council is keen to do more regular clear-ups and no end of local residents have come forward to volunteer for litter-picks which I am happy to organise. The problem however is that National Highways will only allow rubbish collections with a lane closure for ‘health and safety’ reasons, and they want to charge £10,000 a pop for the privilege. Given the amount of road closures that happen for maintenance anyway you would have thought it obvious that National Highways could liaise with the council in advance to coordinate closures with litter-picking without charging £10,000.
That did happen a couple of times last year and I am pleased to say is now scheduled for the weekends of 25/26 March westbound between Lancing Manor roundabout and Hoe Court, and 15/16 April in both directions between the tunnels and the Shoreham flyover. It is particularly important that the rubbish is removed before the grass-cutting starts, and it gets shredded into thousands of pieces. It’s not exactly rocket-science!
