A £12million deal to fund Spalding’s planned Western Relief Road (SWRR) has given Crowland parish councillors fresh impetus to ask for the part-dualling of the A16.
Parish and district councillor Bryan Alcock called for a “similar technique” to be used which brought the A16 Spalding to Peterborough route, in place of the A1073, in 2008.
Funding for SWRR was announced jointly by South Holland District Council and Lincolnshire County Council on Friday, nearly 12 years after a plan was first put forward to link the A151 Bourne Road and Spalding Common.
Coun Alcock said: “Before the A16 was built, we kept the A1073 on the agenda for years to lobby councils in order to get something done.
“I think we should use a similar technique with regards to the A16 between Peterborough and Spalding for at least part of the road to be dualled.
“We could lobby for the A16 between Thorney Road and Queen’s Bank to be dualled to enable people to pass lorries they see as holding them up and ease the temptation to speed on James Road.
“It would also help to alleviate some of the problems that people have with James Road itself.”
Parish councillors will put their case to Coun Richard Davies, the county council’s executive member for highways and transport, who is due to visit Crowland in April.
Coun Alcock said: “We’ve got to be proactive in keeping the scheme in people’s minds so that if, and when, there’s money available, we can get a share of it.”
Meanwhile, parish councillors still want answers from maize contractors after a motorcyclist was injured when he slid on mud left on the A16.
The crash last November led to a section of the A16 at the James Road roundabout being closed for two days while the road was cleaned.
But the council is yet to receive a response from Cambridge firm Pretoria Energy whose vehicles were blamed for leaving the mud whilst transporting maize residue from land off the A16 to an anerobic digester site near Manea.
“Councillors agreed to contact the firm again and will continue to do so until they receive a response.
• Allotment holders could have access to the town’s new site in James Road by May, parish councillors have announced.
Progress on the new site has accelerated since councillors met with representatives for allotment holders last July over concerns about delays to transferring from their current plots, also in James Road.
But in a letter to allotment holders seen by the Spalding Guardian, the parish council set out hopes that a “tenable access plan, new allotment agreement and plot allocation procedure” would be in place eventually.
The letter from the council’s Allotment Working Party said: “We have progressed with establishing the new allotment gardens, with ground preparation, pitch marking, internal roadway demarcation, fencing and hedging, mains water connection and tree clearance.
“However, we significantly underestimated the time needed to get the access road installed and to gain Lincolnshire County Council highways’ authority to connect the allotment site to the road in a cost-effective manner.”
Crowland Parish Council is putting a plan in place to help allotment holders in transferring plants, trees and shrubs between sites.
Part of this is to offer financial assistance for any “legitimate losses” caused by the delay in opening the new site.
• A call for more “prudent” spending has been made after Crowland Parish Council raised its council tax share for 2018-19 by nearly £3,500.
The increase from £74,330 in 2017-18 to £77,800 for the coming year was blamed on a rise in the average value of homes in Crowland, known as the tax base, and greater staff costs.
The new precept will mean a slight rise in the average Band D figure for 2017-18 of £54.61.
Meanwhile, planning permission for a new skate park, an online calendar for councillors and development of an open area in Ambury Gardens are among the targets for 2018.
These are just three of the items that came out of a priorities workshop which parish councillors reported back on during Monday’s meeting.
Coun David Kempton, chairman of the parish council’s planning committee, said: “For a relatively small town, we’ve got a mass of things going on and we need to move some of them on.”
• Cyclists riding through Crowland could soon have somewhere to leave their bikes securely while stopping off for lunch.
Parish councillors want to invest in new cycle hoops and Coun Kempton said: “It would be an unobtrusive way of providing some bike parking, without taking up the same space as bike racks would.”