On Monday I brought together a meeting with people from Network Rail, Leicestershire County Council and some of the businesses at Wistow Rural Centre who have been particularly hard hit by the closures of Newton Lane, Wistow Road and Station Road.
We had a full & frank exchange of views about the mistakes that have been made during this process. While Station Road being closed by an accident was unlucky, I told them the decision to redesign the bridge at Newton Lane and make the planned closure even longer has been disproportionate to the risks they are trying to mitigate – which is to do with a lack of visibility of (very infrequent) traffic from the two tracks that come onto the road just south of the railway bridge.
I and local businesses asked why these issues hadn’t been fixed at the planning stage. Leicestershire County Council said this was because they had allowed Network Rail to get going without a finalised design in order to meet the timings of the electrification work. This is obviously infuriating. They agreed that in future, as the railway electrification passes through the rest of the county, they will not allow this again.
I pressed for a time for the reopening of Newton Lane bridge. They said this would be done by the end of June, which is very bad news. We pressed them on why this can’t happen faster. They said it is a combination of gas works, sewers, times when they can close the railway and a large crane which they are bringing on site.
At this point I said that if they can’t get Newton Lane open sooner they needed to get the other bridge in Newton Harcourt (on Wistow Road) open. The work on that bridge will apparently be done by April but they had been planning to keep both shut till June.
They were a bit resistant as Wistow Road is a narrow single track road, but they have agreed to look at opening it one-way going south and come back to us by Monday next week (18th). That would make it easier to get down to Wistow, speed up journeys compared to going via Station Rd and at least reduce the amount of people going through the eastern end of Newton Harcourt.
Network Rail agreed to work to speed up the process of paying compensation to affected businesses.
For the third time I asked them to remove the incorrect sign at the junction with Glen that says Station Road will shut from 11 March (I originally asked for this to happen in February).
We also talked about why the planned lights on the railway bridge on Station Road (where the temporary ones are) were not put in while it was shut. The whole thing comes back to the lack of a detailed plan. I said that whenever they are put in (and they promise it will not close until Newton Lane reopens) it needs to happen quickly.
To conclude: a lot of mistakes have been made here. Things like reopening Station Road should have happened much sooner - if it even needed to be shut at all.
The meeting enabled local businesses and local people to tell Network Rail and LCC directly what a devastating impact it has had – I know many people in Fleckney feel exactly the same and feel trapped by endless road closures.
I hope the meeting will lead not just to faster compensation but also a sensible solution to enable the use of Wistow Road until Newton Lane reopens. I’m doing what I can and I share the frustration of residents that these two big organisations have made so many mistakes and communicated so badly.
