The first public meeting of the SG19 Safety Group was held in the Theatre Hall at Sandy Upper School on Tuesday evening. Despite the unfortunate clash with the England v Poland football match, a good number of interested local people attended, following on from the excellent response to the new website, which has had 7,300 ‘hits’ to date. Those present at the meeting raised their concerns and nominatedthe roads that need special attention. These are:
- St Neots Road and the High Street, with specific concern for through traffic;
- New Road/Station Road where serious concerns exist for the extra traffic from various developments off it, the junctions at either end, and for the safety of pedestrians using the station;
- Swaden and Stratford Road junctions;
- Beeston High Road and local roads joining it;
- Additional concerns were expressed for the absence of any provision for pedestrians crossing the A1 to access the filling station at the A1/Bedford Road roundabout, and to the way traffic does not recognise pedestrians using the crossing by the library.
The meeting agreed with the Aims for the Group, namely:
In the short term – raise a petition to the Rt Hon Eric Pickles, Dept for Communities and Local Government, and theRt Hon Patrick McLoughlin, Dept for Transport, to
- In the medium term - generate an independent review of the existing road network in the SG19 area; consider how this has been allowed to develop and to rectify the inadequacies that exist.
- In the long term - to secure a proper bypass for Sandy and related improvements to the local road network.
The meeting was overwhelmingly in support of the need for a bypass. It was also critical of the Highways Agency’s apparent lack of interest in Sandy, on the grounds of ‘cost’, to improve the A1 through Beeston and to provide safety measures, while happy to spend £6.5 million merely to speed up journey times through the Black Cat roundabout.
Anyone interested is encouraged to sign up to the website– www.sg19.org - to receive details of future plans and to make their views known to the Group.