Meldreth Matters, September 2020

District and County Councillors’ Report Foliage, Kneesworth Road Foliage obstructing the advance warning of the Kneeworth/Whitecroft/ Fenny Lane junction, along Kneesworth Road before West Way, will be cut back by Highways.

Broken Drain Covers, Whitecroft Road Highways will be repairing a second broken drain in Whitecroft Road near Marys Way. The first, last month, took a long time in spite of being logged as an emergency.

Gulley Cleansing (drains) – a sign of the times It’s a shocking state of affairs when the County Highways no longer has a dedicated budget for preventive gulley cleansing, meaning that there is no automatic cyclical maintenance for drains on the highway.

While central government offers one-off grants for ‘capital projects’, meaning building things, these grants no longer feed into council revenue budgets, meaning maintenance for infrastructure. Instead, councils must find funding through their own revenue funding such as council tax and investments. This has been a fundamental change over the past ten years in the way public services are funded.

On the matter of drain maintenance, any work on gullies needs be commissioned via the Local Highways Officer’s budget. It’s important therefore to highlight, direct to Highways, any pooling or other concerns around individual drains. Please Google ‘Cambridgeshire Report a Fault’ to find the reporting page. We’re very lucky in having such a proactive Parish Councillor in Pat Gilmore, who has developed an excellent relationship with the Highways team and who is assiduous in reporting faults. Please note that SCDC have taken on ‘street cleansing’ in its broadest sense, including spending a couple of weeks in each zone, and then returning after about ten weeks. A rota for work in patches has been set up here: https://www.scambs.gov.uk/ environment/street-care-and-cleaning.

Highway Code: consultation on safety improvements for pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians Another in the suite of government initiatives to encourage active travel is the consultation on the Highway Code, which runs until Tuesday 27th October 2020. To see the links to the full consultation document and ways to respond, please Google ‘Review of the Highway Code.’

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