The dangers of large lorries squeezing along narrow roads in villages near Burton could soon be solved following the launch of an improvement package designed to reduce the impact heavy commercial vehicles are having.
Wagons currently rumble along the A515 through the villages of Yoxall and Kings Bromley in East Staffordshire as it provides a short cut from the A38 to the A50, and drivers are often being guided along the route by their sat-navs.
Shocking footage has also been released of lorries mounting the pavements to squeeze past other vehicles on the road, which has added to the fears for the safety of youngsters from the local primary school.
Now the Staffordshire Freight and Communities Forum has met to discuss the problems. The forum has the specific focus of reducing HGV impact along the A515, which affects the villages of Draycott-in-the-Clay, Yoxall and Kings Bromley.
The group, which includes representatives from the parish councils, Staffordshire County Council, Highways England, police and the fire service, has agreed to introduce measures to tackle the issues as soon as possible.
Options being considered include new signs to advise HGV drivers that the route is unsuitable for them even though there is no weight restriction currently on the route, engineering improvements such as build-outs on parts of the route and looking at restricting HGV movements onto the A515, such as from the A513.
A plea was made by the campaign group Yoxall Traffic Action Group (YTAG) to introduce a weight limit on their section of the street to prevent HGVs using it, but council bosses said they would not be implementing this in the near future because the route is priority route.
This means if there were to be diversion on the A50 or the A38 the A515 would have to be used by traffic, including lorries.
The action group had issued a plea to council bosses to introduce a weight limit on their street following years of problems caused by the large lorries using Yoxall as a shortcut.
The forum also agreed to write to all Staffordshire MPs to ask for their support in lobbying the Government to address issues resulting from national freight policy. It will continue to look for solutions to issues in other parts of the county at future meetings.
The county council's cabinet member responsible for highways and transport Mark Deaville said: "Friday's meeting was hugely positive and enabled us to make great progress towards delivering measures which we hope will make a real difference.
"Our highways officers drew up a highly detailed report with several options, with considerable input from the parish councils to which we are very grateful. It means we will be in a position to take action as soon as possible to begin to address some of the community concerns.
"There has been a great deal of necessary process to get to this stage, so we're pleased now to get things started. We will of course monitor the impact of everything we do. We know these measures won’t fix everything, but we’re certainly moving in the right direction.”
The county council initially postponed the July freight forum meeting as it sought to analyse data from the latest traffic survey.
The action said it will be meeting with the working party groups and parish councils before it comments on the details.
