“The reality is whenever we want to build anything in Lincolnshire we need national support,” said the senior county councillor in charge of highways as the next phase of a multi-million pound relief road was unveiled in Grantham.
It was a stark reminder of how fragile an idea for a new road project can be.
In just two weeks the county has seen an £81 million scheme take a further step in Grantham, but another placed on the shelf in Horncastle.
Residents in the latter had been calling for a bypass for years and local MP Victoria Atkins, raised the issue in 2016.
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The town centre becomes a bottleneck as drivers, often venturing to Skegness or the coast, cars pile up bumper-to-bumper on the A158.
But, council officials have struggled to find funding for the scheme. Councillor Richard Davies, the authority’s highways chief, said it was “unfortunate” that the scheme had to be put on hold.
County council officials stressed that it doesn’t mean that the town will never get a bypass.
Councillor Richard Davies, cabinet member for highways at Lincolnshire County Council. Picture: Calvin Robinson.
But, it shows a problem that raises its head at any local authority.
Councils table plans with the best intentions and then hit a wall when it comes to financing the project or realise that the evidence for the plan does not stack up.
This can be best demonstrated in Perth, Scotland, where both cases came to light on proposals to upgrade the A9 slip road.
Known locally as the Stewart Tower Road, Perth and Kinross Council had proposed spending £750,000 dualling the narrow road in order to relieve congestion.
Visuals of the £120 million Lincoln Eastern Bypass. Picture: Lincolnshire County Council.
But, in July last year, authority officials removed the programme after they said the impact on “future traffic remains unclear” and that the money set aside for the plan was “likely to be insufficient”.
In Lincolnshire a range of projects are hoped to reach a conclusion, albeit with some delayed or over budget, such as Lincoln’s Eastern Bypass.
But others, both in the county and elsewhere, fall victim to a lack of national support.
Horncastle’s bypass may live to see the light of day another time, but at the moment the plan is sitting on a shelf inside county head offices.
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A 38-year-old man from a North Lincolnshire village charged with murder will face an eight-day trial later this year.
Emergency services were called at 4.23am on Saturday, July 2 to reports that a man was seriously injured on South Parade in central Doncaster.
The 28-year-old victim was taken to hospital but was sadly pronounced dead a short time later.
A post-mortem examination found that he died of injuries to his head, chest and abdomen.
Formal identification of the victim is yet to take place, South Yorkshire Police said earlier this week.
Steven Ling, 38, of Park Drain, Westwoodside in North Lincolnshire, has been charged with murder and was remanded in custody to appear at Doncaster Magistrates Court on Monday, July 4.
Ling later appeared at Sheffield Crown Court on Tuesday, July 5 for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
No pleas were entered during the hearing, but an eight-day trial was set for November 28, 2022. Ling has now been remanded into custody until the next hearing.
The Lincolnite went on a ride-along with a Lincolnshire Police officer from the force’s Roads Policing Unit (RPU), which aims to disrupt criminals’ use of the roads and reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents.
The team will support the county response including local policing, neighbourhood policing and criminal investigation too.
Operations first began in Grantham in January this year and started in Louth earlier this week with a sergeant and nine PCs based in both locations.
The Lincolnite went out on a ride-along with PC Rich Precious from Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
PC Rich Precious has been a police officer for 22 years after joining the force in 2000 and he recently rejoined the Roads Policing Unit, working out of Louth.
PC Precious, who also previously worked as a family liaison officer for road deaths for 16 years, took The Lincolnite out in his police car to the A1 up to Colsteworth and then back to Grantham. He described that particular area as “one of the main arterial routes that goes through Lincolnshire”.
PC Rich Precious driving down the A1 up to Colsterworth. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Speaking about the new Roads Policing Unit, he said: “It’s intelligence led policing, it’s targeted policing in areas that have been underrepresented in terms of police presence, on the roads certainly, over a number of years.
“We’re hoping that the development of this unit will help address that balance, and look towards using the ANPR system to prevent criminals’ use of the road, and to identify key areas or routes where there’s a high percentage of people killed or seriously injured on the road, what we commonly refer to as KSI.
PC Precious is helping to keep the roads safer in Lincolnshire. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
When asked if he thinks the new team will help reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents in the county, he added: “That’s what the the unit designed for. Sadly, in Lincolnshire our road network does seem to incur a number of those KSI accidents year on year, and we need to reduce that.
“I’ve worked additionally in my roles as a family liaison officer on road death for 16 years, so I’ve seen first hand the impact that road death has on families and victims families.
“I know it’s important that we try and reduce those because, it’s very sad to see how a fatal road traffic collision can affect a family and the victims of that family.”
Marc Gee, Inspector for Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Marc Gee, Inspector for the Roads Policing Unit, told The Lincolnite: “Every day there will be officers on duty from both teams and they’ll cover the whole county or the county’s roads.
“Eventually, we’ll have nine police cars and we’ve got six motorbikes. We’ll be utilising them with as many officers as we can every day basically to make our roads safer and enforce against the criminals who feel like it’s okay to come into the county and use our road for criminal purposes.”
Lincolnshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones at the launch of the force’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
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