LETTER: Hopes dashed over road improvments

He appears to be putting his trust in local and county councils plus an American firm.

I think he is living in a fool’s paradise. Not his fault. He says he has been campaigning for a decade to persuade the council to ease the problems along his road.

I am afraid that he is a virtual novice with only a decade of trying to receive some sort of decent treatment from the people he pays his council tax to.

I’ve been doing exactly that for three decades since the planning and construction of the Horsham northern bypass and the Great Daux roundabout. Half of my life has been wasted and my health wrecked.

A glaringly obvious error in judgement was made during the construction of this scheme which was detrimental to our lives, becoming extremely dangerous at times.

It has been admitted by West Sussex County Council that this situation would not have been created these days, but can we get the council to correct the error – no. It never seems to address any of the problems it incurs, it is all powerful.

Mr, Mrs or Ms Nicholas is obviously all fired up with the trusting certainty that he will get, at long last the answer to his problems, that this proposed development is a gift from the Gods, all his problems will be sorted out to his satisfaction, never mind the suffering of so many others.

I have had my hopes dashed so many times as his surely will be. Landowners and developers will benefit from these situations not ‘small fry’ like us.

The councils, in my experience, will pay you lip service and each time you become certain that this is it, they really are going to do the right thing by you, to exercise the ‘duty of care’ legend of the West Sussex County Council. I don’t know how many times this has happened all to no avail.

It seems similar to being dealt with by highwaymen of two centuries ago, they take your money and treat you badly (yes, I have had verbal abuse) into the bargain.

All this aside, the obvious question on everyone’s minds is – what about the A24 between the Great Daux roundabout and Capel and the knock-on effect of the traffic generated from these large developments locally?

This road just cannot take any additional traffic, it is a five mile bottleneck between two dual carriageways.

WSCC repeat parrot fashion that it is not the road which is at fault but the people who drive along it, but as I have witnessed, the single carriageways do incite motorists to take risks, overtaking into oncoming traffic is a common occurrence with the obvious consequences.

I feel sure that WSCC has plans for this stretch of road, it would be negligent not to.

The council plays everything so close to its chest that who can tell what it is hatching. I only know that when I wrote to ask the council a while ago, the reply was – it was making models!

In the January 5, 2012 issue of this paper there was an article entitled, ‘Campaign group welcomes decision on A24 stretch’.

This was an article in which Peter Finch, from what one of Warnham Parish Council members described as the ‘self styled A24 Alliance’. Mr Finch is from further south where there already is dual carriageway.

He was delighted that the new road to Capel was now off the statute book (never mind saving lives). He went on to say and I quote: ‘This is welcome news. We have campaigned for many years that this scheme should be scrapped. It was a hugely expensive white elephant of a scheme’.

He also said, ‘WSCC recently announced that it had dropped plans for the alignment of the Capel to Horsham stretch’. The council said it had managed to make the road safer simply by making some cheap safety improvements.

Well, Mr Finch and WSCC got that one wrong didn’t they – nothing has changed with regard to the number of motoring incidents. The safety improvements were so cheap it was hard to find any evidence of them.

W. MORRISS

Dorking Road, Warnham

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