New Clevedon Seafront Road Scheme: Safety

“create safe routes for people to walk and cycle safely”,

but far from improving safety, I believe that North Somerset’s plans to remodel—many of us would say vandalise—the historic seafront at Clevedon will create new safety risks for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike.

Let me begin with the range of problems related to road safety. I do not expect my right hon. Friend the Minister, with all his grasp of detail, for which he is well known in this House, to understand the geography of Clevedon seafront, but currently, cars can park directly facing the sea. Should residents want to get out and walk along the seafront, they simply have to get out of their cars and walk directly on to the pavement. Under this new, brilliant scheme, there is a two-lane cycleway immediately adjacent to the seafront. Cars have to park in the middle of the road, drivers have to get out of their cars into the traffic lane itself, and passengers and drivers alike have to cross a two-way cycle lane to get to the seafront. This is supposed to be improving the safety of pedestrians.

We saw recently in our press examples of what might be kindly described as the eccentricity of the scheme. First, we had what were known as the wiggly lines, which none of us could find any reference to in any of the literature of road safety—no one seems to know what they are for. Those were followed by what locals have come to call the crop circle at the end, which is another road marking. None of us knows exactly what it is: it is not a roundabout or a mini-roundabout. What, exactly, its purpose is is not known to us. The scheme is not improving safety for cyclists either, because neither end of the very limited cycle lanes connects with the seamless cycleway described by North Somerset: those lanes connect with busy roads that cyclists have to cross, one of which has a considerable gradient, and the speed of the traffic coming down there is sometimes extremely dangerous indeed. In fact, when I visited recently, I was almost hit myself by one cyclist racing along the road because of the pace of the cyclists in the cycle lane. The scheme is adding to the dangers that cyclists face, not reducing them. That would be bad enough in itself, were it not for the method by which the scheme came into being.

Why are we getting these changes? We seem to have a council that is obsessed with bicycle lanes and meddling with our road system—to whose benefit, it is not clear. Many of the businesses think that the council is blind or simply indifferent to local businesses, preferring to get the plaudits of the cycle lobby, whether in North Somerset or elsewhere. That is affecting business not only on the seafront, but in the Hill Road shopping area.

For us, the scheme is a major loss of amenity. For generations, people have come to Clevedon to look at all those elements I have described. This is a scheme for which there is no need, no demand and no desire from the local population. It creates road safety problems where none existed. It was not properly consulted upon and due diligence may indeed have been absent in the road safety elements that were the duty of the council before bringing the scheme into place. It is a waste of money, with overspending rumoured to be around £250,000. That will have to be taken from local taxpayers, or programmes locally will have to be cut as a consequence.

We need to change the council, and to do that we have to change the councillors, for which we have an opportunity in our local elections in May. Before 2019, and before the council of chaos came into being, we had a competent Conservative local authority, which I hope we will see again, but my right hon. Friend the Minister can help us by saying what the Government might be able to do directly, or through their agencies, to enable us to deal with some of these road safety issues and reassure my constituents that, even when we have a council that will not listen to what they want, we have a Government in Westminster who will.

In general, the Government take, as I have said, road safety extremely seriously. Reducing the numbers of those needlessly killed and injured on our roads is a crucial priority. The Department continues to make progress in that area. For example, through the safer roads fund, we have invested in schemes to make our 50 most dangerous roads safer. All those schemes are complete or under way and, over the next 20 years, those improvements alone are expected to save 1,500 lives. We also completed the biggest overhaul of the highway code in decades in 2022, so that vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists have priority in certain situations. The Department is working on a road safety strategic frame- work, and the aim is to have it published this spring. Based on a “safe system” approach, it will consider what might be appropriate to support performance indicators on casualty reduction.

“new wavy road markings could accidentally prove to be a road safety risk”.

It seems to me that the RAC is independently validating my right hon. Friend’s concerns. If they are a safety hazard, of course that is a matter to be taken extremely seriously, not just locally but by Active Travel England and the Department as it considers the wider picture on road safety.

I reassure the House and my right hon. Friend that ATE will be arranging an inspection of the scheme as part of its regular review programme. That will also consider safety issues, such as those that have been highlighted in this debate. As I understand it, some remedial work has already taken place on the scheme, although it may not be clear yet what changes will be made finally to the scheme as a whole. Although the Department has no powers to halt or remove the scheme, and ATE does not have powers to compel local authorities to make changes to active travel schemes, they are absolutely in a position to record non-compliance on design and safety issues that have been identified. Those then can, in the normal way, become the subject of public debate, local review, and any actions or reactions through proper local democratic processes. Design review outcomes will in turn inform assessments of the capability of local authorities, which in turn will have a material impact on future funding for schemes.

On engagement and consultation, it is true that any scheme must be developed and implemented after thorough engagement with the community affected. The Department has made that extremely clear. It appears, as I understand it, that North Somerset Council did carry out some public engagement on the proposals. It is important to say that objective methods should be used to establish a genuinely representative picture of local views and to ensure that minority views do not dominate a proper consultation process. Engagement should not end when a scheme is introduced. Authorities should continue to monitor how schemes are performing and make changes if they are required. I notice that some changes have already been made to the scheme. Authorities should also be open to making changes to any scheme in the light of further experience and real world feedback. The requirement to monitor and engage with local people therefore does not end with the apparent completion of construction work on a scheme.

Let me close by saying that I am very thankful to my right hon. Friend for raising this important local issue on the Floor of the House of Commons and on the public record. ATE will be inspecting the scheme as part of the normal review process, and the Department will continue to focus on safety and the improvement of safety for all road users now and in future.