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£8m bypass plan is shelved
Tuesday 10th March 2009, 2:40PM GMT.
Plans to build an £8 million bypass to get rid of a north Shropshire accident blackspot have been shelved.
The application for cash for Sandford, near Whitchurch, was rejected by the West Midlands Regional Assembly.
Campaigners have long been calling for a bypass at Sandford, but council bosses said that “realistically” they would not now get any cash to fund a bypass for the next 10 years.
Council officials have stressed that since interactive signs were installed to slow traffic down, there has not been a single crash on the A41 at Sandford bridge.
Phil Crossland, assistant director highways and traffic at Shropshire Council, said: “Unfortunately the A41 is not part of the West Midlands Regional Funding advice that they have submitted to government because it didn’t score high enough in the regional prioritisation process to be considered for funding and that takes the region up to 2019.
“So realistically the council is not going to get funding for any Sandford bypass for the next 10 years.”
If funding had been approved, the 1km bypass would have taken the A41 around the village.
Mr Crossland added: “In reality it’s not going to happen for the foreseeable future.
“However, we have addressed the majority of the problems which were the casualty problems that were occurring there, they seem to have been successfully addressed by the measures we have put in.”
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“West Midlands Regional Assembly” – what the devil is that?
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So, all you good people of Sandford, you know who to blame if the blackspot claims future lives: the *unelected* West Midlands Regional Assembly – that robust body of central government-appointed jobsworths whose main function appears to be to over-rule or ignore local opinion and needs, while dispensing public money and largesse on self-aggrandising, back-slapping, duplicate and pointless projects that are not needed or wanted by the majority of the people who are struggling to get by without the huge public salaries an gold-plated, taxpayer-funded pensions that these bureaucrats expect as a right.
Time to save millions and get disband this public nuisance – give local decisions back to local people!
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I thought we were supposed to be spending our way out of the current financial crisis, not cancelling much needed improvements
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