Baston residents call on Lincolnshire County Council to make A15 crossroads safer

A busy main road has been branded the biggest blight on a village - as a call is made for new safety measures.

Despite decades of campaigning for changes to the A15, members of Baston Parish Council feel the main route through the village is no safer.

Chairperson of the parish council, Adrian Clarke, said: “The biggest thing that blights people living here is the speeding and problems with the crossroads.”

The crossroads are a particular point of contention in the village, apparently often causing hundreds of yards of traffic on the adjoining Greatford Road and Main Street as frustrated drivers wait to join the A15.

When drivers are waiting in the yellow criss-crossed box on the A15 for a safe chance to cross they are often undertaken, and a stop sign on one side of the road and a give way on the other causes further confusion, according to parish councillors.

According to figures from the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership, in the past five years there have been seven crashes which resulted in injury in Baston - one of which was categorised as serious.

Of these, four – all classified as slight injury - are recorded as occurring on the junction of Greatford Road and Main Street with the A15, while the other three crashes happened south of the crossroads on the A15.

Damage only crashes are not recorded by the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership.

After a three-vehicle crash caused chaos in the village last week and left two drivers with minor injuries, the parish council is renewing its call to Lincolnshire County Council, which is responsible for highways, for safety improvements.

“This is a serious accident waiting to happen,” said Coun Clarke.

“What we want to do is prevent that.”

He added: “Some of it is down to driver behaviour but a lot of it is avoidable with the reduction of the speed limit and traffic lights.

“It would make it much safer.”

The parish council wants to see the current 40mph speed limit on the A15 dropped to 30mph and four-way traffic lights to be installed at the crossroads.

A speed survey by Lincolnshire County Council found that the mean speed of traffic makes a ‘borderline case’ for the limit to be dropped to 30mph, which the planning and regulation committee will debate.

Coun Richard Davies, who is responsible for highways at Lincolnshire County Council said: “Looking back on our records to 2019, we have not been asked to assess the junction for multi-way traffic signals.

“A request such as this would also be made via the local county councillor, or come to us if the accident record at the location reached the necessary intervention level.”

Previous meetings have been held with representatives for the county council regarding safety improvements but, according to parish councillors, they were told due to a small number of serious or fatal crashes it is not deemed high risk.

Coun Clarke said: “While we accept in recent years there haven’t been any really serious injuries, are they suggesting we wait until there are?”

He believes even low-level accidents have a far reaching impact from the people involved and the congestion to the deployment of the emergency services and insurance costs.

Coun Richard Davies, who is responsible for highways at Lincolnshire County Council said: “As always, we’re very happy to listen to any suggestions made and then take them through the necessary steps on the route to either implementing them where we can, or seeing what else we can do if not.

“Highways is always open to listening to local communities and their traffic issues and I would strongly recommend that anyone who has something to say about the roads in their area gets in touch via their local county councillor.”

A new set of speed indicators were installed last year by Baston Parish Council in Main Street, Greatford Road and on the A15.

Fed up of waiting for something to be done, the parish council felt that speed indicators would attempt to slow traffic on the roads in and around the village.

Hundreds of drivers have been recorded breaking the speed limit including one who travelled through the village at 71mph on a Sunday morning.

There is also a pedestrian crossing near the crossroads, which Coun Clarke says some vehicles don’t obey, and a gatso speed camera.

What do you think? Share your views in the comments below.