The other day at the Sarisbury Community Centre at Sarisbury Green was the latest meeting of the Western Wards Community Action Team (CAT), I had been to one previously in March at the Locks Heath Free Church (just down the road from me) in Hunts Pond Road. I always like to go along to these sort of meetings where I can find out what is going on in the local community and just to see what people are concerned about.

The meeting started off with Cllr Seán Woodward giving a presentation on what has happened over the last year and what is being planned for the future. Mr Woodward said that he was going to a meeting with some people from Morrisons to discuss where they wish to build the 70,000 square-foot store in the Locks Heath Centre, as he had no idea where it was to be built and was going to be told in a meeting that he said would be soon.

After his presentation, Seán Woodward then asked those who attended if they had any concerns they wished to raise. Pretty much everyone talked about road safety, pinch points, blind spots and one man in particular (whom I had the pleasure of speaking to afterwards) was talking about one very long cycle lane from Yew Tree Drive to Southampton Airport! That is a rather interesting idea indeed.

A few students from Brookfield Community School came to the meeting and spoke about blind spots along Brook Lane towards the school. The student who raised the issue of blind spots, spoke of her own personal experience of being hit by a car. She said that although she looked, she couldn’t tell if a car was coming with this blind spot. A few people in the room spoke as well of how dangerous it is when the nights get darker and it gets near to impossible to make a sound judgement whether to cross the road or not.

Down Hunts Pond Road, towards the part that comes down near the new Housing Development near Warsash Road, there is a pinch point that so many members of the community were concerned about. Since there is not only a pinch point but a turn in for a road, and the amount of times I’ve seen people swerving around that corner and nearly having a fatal accident is almost too much for me, and certainly too much for the people attending this meeting (on the 11th of January this year that little bit of it was closed off because someone had a car accident there, to my knowledge it wasn’t fatal – which is a good sign).

But at the end of it, the point came back to Speeding. Something which I’ve spoken about before is the Community Speedwatch program which allows residents who are concerned about speeding the chance to help out where the police have their hands full. Many of those who attended seemed to be indifferent to the idea of this scheme, but the figures spoke for themselves. Speeding went down during the daylight hours (when the volunteers were out tackling the problem) but during the night many residents felt that the problem just came back around.

I know that myself in my last campaign election leaflet I said that I would talk to the council about tackling the issue of speeding, and I think now is the time for me to put those words into action. In Keith Taylor‘s leaflet “Our Streets” he talks about tackling speeding as a means for quieter, less congested and less polluted roads.

As a minor side/final note I do recommend anyone who wants to know what is going on in the local area or anyone who wants to have a good read, I certainly recommend the Western Wards Gazette website.

Thank you for reading,

Miles Grindey