What is going on with Woodmans Hill in Broadfield?

At the last Broadfield Neighbourhood forum it was one of the roads mentioned as being a safety concern due to the speed of traffic going down it, but there was supposed to be some traffic calming there at least a year ago.

The story so far is that there was a design brief in about 2002 or 2003 for the redevelopment of the old council depot site behind Broadfield House and we managed to get the need for some sort of traffic calming included in it.

Planning permission was given either in late 2003 or early 2004 (I think) for the houses and flats and there was a planning condition that a mini roundabout would have to be put on Woodmans Hill under a Section 106 agreement. If I remember rightly it had to be in place before the 19th property was occupied.

At the time I didn’t think a mini roundabout would be the most effective form of traffic calming, but it has to be better than nothing.

Fast forward to October 2005 and the building was well advanced with a couple of show homes open to the public. I remember that date properly because I went in to have a nose around and took some photos.

Early in 2006 when the houses were being occupied I asked a local councillor to find out what happened to the roundabout. He came back with a story about the developers intending to put in in before Christmas 2005 but being told by the county council to not do it at that time because of disruption in the festive season or something.

It is now halfway through 2007 and it looks like the whole of the new development is being occupied but there is still no sign of any sort of traffic calming. I had wondered if the developers were trying to escape their obligation, or whether they had got the Section 106 agreement overturned so somebody made enquiries for me.

He was told that there is no problem because the developers have done their work and installed traffic calming measures, and that is really fishy. It implies that the S106 still stands so the developers have managed to get out of it.

They have saved a few bob and our best chance of improving the safety on Woodmans Hill has disappeared – once the builders have sold their buildings and moved on there is very little leverage to get them to carry out the work.

But why do the council think that the work was done? Have they not been up there? I go down that road every day and I think that if anyone had put a roundabout on it I would have noticed.

At the moment the only traffic calming there is in the form of potholes but I don’t think they count. Besides they are not yet deep enough to really slow traffic down. Given WSCC’s track record on fixing roads they probably will be deep enough before too long, but that’s not the point is it?

Why are we allowing developers to get away with not making the contributions they agreed to? Why is the council not enforcing the Section 106 agreements it imposes? How many other Section 106 agreements in town have been reneged on?

I would get an official question asked at the next council meeting, but I am not sure I could rely on the answer – after all as far as they are concerned the one at Woodmans Hill was honoured when the famous invisible roundabout was built.