Shropshire Star

'Danger road' fear over Shropshire village homes

Protestors lined a narrow village road to show their case that plans for a housing development there are "an accident waiting to happen".

Published

Residents of West Felton, near Oswestry, joined UKIP councillors and parliamentary candidates on Saturday to protest against plans to narrow the B5009 Holyhead Road to accommodate a footpath and build another 35 houses on agricultural land.

Chris Jones, of of the village's parish councillors, said: "You only have to stand here for five minutes to see the B5009 Holyhead Rd is already far too narrow – it's actually already below regulation width - and that the plans to narrow it are crazy.

"In the time we stood at the roadside, several large agricultural vehicles and local buses passed through the village, demonstrating that the plans are an accident waiting to happen.

"Nobody in West Felton wants this. Shropshire Council says they're listening and consulting, but the fact is the National Planning Policy Framework rules and they will build new houses and narrow the road whether we like it or not."

Among the protestors was Suzanne Evans, UKIP National Deputy Chairman and the prospective parliamentary candidate for Shrewsbury and Atcham, who said she was concerned by what she had seen.

"The Holyhead road is still used as a diversion from the new A5 when there are roadworks or accidents and you only have to stand here for five minutes and you can see it's far too narrow already. If it was 12 to 18 inches narrower, you get a bus or a tractor trying to pass a kid on a bike and it's a terrifying thought quite frankly," she said.

"We should be focussed building on brownfield sites and bringing empty homes back into use long before we even begin to consider the loss of precious agricultural land to a dangerous development like this."

Protestors have also claimed that the local infrastructure will not be able to cope with more houses.

Andrea Allen, the UKIP prospective parliamentary candidate for North Shropshire said: "The local school is already oversubscribed, the road is already busy, and the scale and location of this development is completely out of keeping for this rural community. People who chose to live in rural areas are increasingly finding they are forced to live in small towns with no facilities.

"It's not just West Felton, it's happening all over the county and Shropshire people have had enough of it."

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