Spalding traffic woes made worse by lack of communication between Anglian Water and Lincolnshire County Council
Spalding’s traffic problems were made worse this week after a lack of communication saw two nearby routes being shut due to roadworks.
Lincolnshire County Council and Anglian Water both say they were unaware of the other’s plans to close two busy nearby roads in Spalding - and has generated traffic chaos for motorists for days.
Anglian Water (AW) shut Commercial Road in Spalding on Sunday due to a problem with its sewage network and had Queens Road as a diversion - but this was shut a day later for the council to complete pavement improvements works and ease the traffic on Holbeach Road due to the A16 improvement works at Springfields roundabout. The county had shared on Friday it’s plans to shut Queens Road.
South Holland District Council leader Nick Worth has called for better coordination of roadworks in order to prevent Spalding grinding to halt in the future.
Earlier today, Anglian Water promised that Commercial Road would be open by tomorrow morning.
The county’s head of highways asset, Richard Fenwick said: "When a company such as Anglian Water initiate an emergency closure then we try to help as much as possible with traffic flow and road closure. In this case, we didn't have notification of the problems in time to do anything about the traffic flow and only found out about the AW issue and their road closure much later.
"We are looking at what we can do with our works to alleviate the traffic issues as quickly as we can in light of AW independently closing off Commercial Road to deal with their asset. We will put any mitigation in place, where possible, as a priority."
Anglian Water says four tankers were used to pump away waste from Commercial Road after a water main on the sewage network burst on Sunday but has confirmed there was no contamination in the nearby River Welland.
The firm says it has emergency powers to shut the roads but is not affiliated to the one.network - which is a website which allows utility companies and authoritites to share road closures - so the closure notice did not appear until later on Monday.
A spokesman said: “Where there is a danger to the public or the environment, we do have the power to shut the road immediately. This is always followed by a full application to the relevant highways authority, which must be done within two hours of the work starting, or by 10am the next working day if outside normal working hours. We’re not affiliated with one.network and so we have no power to update it, but I would imagine this explains why this closure didn’t show up on their website until Monday afternoon.
“We do make a real effort to update our own Check service 24/7 whenever our work may have a disruptive effect on local communities, and this event was uploaded to Check on Sunday night, when it first occurred.”
The spokesman said its teams were not aware of the works on nearby Queens Road.
She added: “Our team could not see any other closures in place along the diversion route when they put it in place. This was based on a check of existing and upcoming works between Saturday, September 14, and Wednesday September 18. If there are any additional closures in place now, these would have been initiated after our closure began.
“However, when it comes to planned work, the responsibility of managing these schemes in the least disruptive way possible sits with the Highways team. We have a dedicated Streetworks team which works closely with Highways day to day to get these schemes planned in as quickly as possible with the least disruption possible, but the ultimate decision sits with Highways.”
