Warwickshire village where walking is ‘dicing with death’
DESPITE its undeniable charm as a picturesque south Warwickshire village, Claverdon, it seems, has one big drawback – it’s dangerous to live there.
This was the overwhelming message that emerged from a public meeting on Saturday called to discuss speeding traffic in the locality and officialdom’s failure to deal with it.
According to the meeting’s organiser, Steve Lister, residents walking the streets of Claverdon took their lives in their hands. “We shouldn’t have to live in fear in the village,” he said.
And, pointing out that elderly residents were “frightened of being blown over” by gusts of wind caused by speeding lorries, and that parents drove their children to school rather than let them walk because it was “too dangerous”, Mr Lister said: “Our postman is a real hero. How he’s surviving I don’t know.” This prompted a round of applause.
Earlier, setting the scene, Mr Lister said: “This is a meeting we didn’t want. We’re gathered here because we’ve been ignored by the very people who’re supposed to be looking after us, protecting us.”
And those people, it was made abundantly clear, were officials from Warwickshire County Council’s highways department, who’d repeatedly turned down requests for speed reducing measures on the A4189 Henley to Warwick road that runs through Claverdon.
Not surprisingly those self-same officials also turned down an invitation to attend this meeting, which was so packed that the seating ran out and a number of people had to stand. (It would, after all, have been a bit like entering a lion’s den.)
But those people who did attend included Stratford MP Manuela Perteghella, Warwickshire county councillor Ian Shenton (Con, Arden), who also represents Wootton Wawen on Stratford District Council, and Stratford district councillor Duncan Parker (Green, Claverdon and Snitterfield). Another person on hand to address the meeting was Sally Rolfe, traffic management adviser to Warwickshire Police.
Explaining the background, Mr Lister told the meeting: “There was a petition 30 years ago to lower the speed. Six hundred people signed it – and nobody listened to it.”
Mr Lister moved to Claverdon from Solihull two years ago. After a few months he became the leading light in a revamped campaign to tackle traffic speed on the A4189. This road has three speed limits – 50mph on the outer edges reducing to 40mph, with 30mph in the centre of the village.
He and his fellow campaigners even had meetings with officials from the county council’s highways department. The campaigners came up with a variety of suggested measures, including reduced speed limits, humps in the road and road narrowing (where vehicles have to stop to allow traffic coming the other way to pass through). All the ideas have been rejected – despite the fact that Claverdon Parish Council has ring-fenced £10,000 towards the cost of any new measures.
According to Mr Lister, the highways officials regard the A4819 as “fast, but not dangerous”, with “not enough road accidents to justify any changes”. He told the meeting: “Eighteen months later not a single thing has been done.”
One suggestion coming from the other side, however, concerned the “Please Drive Carefully” sign for drivers entering the village. “Have you considered changing the wording on your sign?” asked one official, to the astonishment of all and sundry.
When Ms Perteghella was called to speak, she made it very clear that she would be pulling out all the stops to try to get something done.
“Claverdon has a horrendous issue,” she told the residents. “I’m most concerned that you’ve been ignored for 18 months – even for 30 years.”
A little later Mr Lister said: “Manuela will be our facilitator, to navigate us through the various departments to get some action.” Ms Perteghella then quipped: “It helps that I’ve got MP after my name!” This remark produced an inevitable ripple of laughter.
Ms Perteghella demonstrated her solidarity with the residents by telling them that they would indeed get a speed reduction in the village as well as double white lines (which warn drivers to slow down).
“We will fight your corner,” she declared. “I find it disgraceful you have to wait for a fatality to get things done.”
And to illustrate residents’ experience of dicing with death in the village, one man declared: “Last week I nearly got run over by a lorry. It came up on the footpath and nearly knocked me over.” Another man piped up: “A motorbike ended up in my front garden.”
After reference was made to the fact that a 20mph limit had been introduced in nearby Ullenhall, traffic expert Ms Rolfe said that Claverdon was unlikely to get something similar. “There’s no point in 20mph if you can’t get them [drivers] to do 30mph,” she said.
The meeting was told about a speed data survey that was conducted at the parish’s own expense which found that 51 per cent of all vehicles were exceeding the designated speed limits.
(In one of the worst findings 84 per cent of all vehicles eastbound on Station Road towards Warwick were over the 40mph speed limit and 359 of them were travelling at more than 61mph.)
Residents were also told that travelling at 1mph over the speed limit was not classed as speeding. For instance, speeding in a 50mph zone was only taken seriously when it was 50mph plus ten per cent plus 2mph – resulting in a speed of 57mph.
Ms Rolfe said that one speed check on the A4189 showed that 72 offences were committed by drivers during a two-hour period.
One other apparent anomaly concerned the imposition of limits reducing traffic speed immediately from 50mph to 30mph. “We’ve been told we can’t reduce it from 50 to 30 because it doesn’t give drivers time to slow down,” said Mr Lister. But other locations had such a system, including neighbouring Wootton Wawen.
Some of the issues raised by residents were not just about speed. One woman complained about poor visibility caused by an overgrown hedgerow at an awkward road junction. Another woman feared the effect of huge increases in the volume of traffic that would be caused by massive housing developments that might happen in the future.
On the subject of hedgerows, Cllr Shenton said: “We had this problem in Ullenhall. We told the resident to either cut it back, or we will cut it back, and you might lose the hedge altogether.”
In response to the concerns about housing development and volumes of traffic, Cllr Shenton said: “Not all the plans in the South Warwickshire Local Plan will come forward because the roads will not be able to take the traffic.”
And he added: “They had to stop building at Long Marston because the road system couldn’t take it.” He advised people with worries to take part in the consultation process which went on until March.
Cllr Duncan hinted at the chance the residents will have to make a difference at the county council elections in May (which Conservative-controlled Warwickshire is trying to postpone because of the government’s devolution proposals).
He said: “I want to give you a bit of a message of hope. There will be change in the future. We will prove to them that we are more resolute in getting this done than they are at stopping us.
“We’re very lucky we live in a democracy. They’re not dragging their feet – they’re dragging their knuckles. They’re living in the 1980s. There’s the will. There’s the capacity. We need to make that change possible via the county council.”
Ms Perteghella echoed this need for change. “We have to change the policy,” she said. “We have to change the culture. If they can do it in Gloucestershire and they can do it in Oxfordshire, we can do it here.
“We will fight. It will not be overnight. We will fight the culture in highways as well. It’s just not good enough.”
But Cllr Shenton, perhaps sensing a drift into the realm of politics, said: “I am not political with anything I do. It is not political. It is about having the will and the desire to push things along.”
He then appeared to become very political by referring to the recent change of government. “What a disaster!” someone shouted. And then, in an intended comparison, Cllr Shenton said: “A change of council will not necessarily make any difference.”
Cllr Shenton said he would do his very best for Claverdon, regardless. “It’s not a political issue,” he said, by way of re-emphasis.
The people of Claverdon will now have a chance to see whether he’s right as they battle on to make their village safe from speeding drivers.
