Another Road Closure to affect Rodbourne Residents

Your local Labour Ward Councillors were very concerned to learn of plans to shut Rodbourne Road for a month from the 18th April 2016.  Our main concerns are that:

  1. The closure comes so soon after the huge inconvenience that Rodbourne residents have had to endure by the mismanagement of the Bruce Street Bridges roundabout scheme by the Conservative administration.
  2. We heard about the road closure from Network Rail two weeks ago rather than from the council who have been involved in discussions with them for several months.  We believe that local residents should be kept fully informed at all times. 

Your local Labour Ward Councillors were very concerned to learn of plans to shut Rodbourne Road for a month from the 18th April 2016.  Our main concerns are that:

  1. The closure comes so soon after the huge inconvenience that Rodbourne residents have had to endure by the mismanagement of the Bruce Street Bridges roundabout scheme by the Conservative administration.
  2. We heard about the road closure from Network Rail two weeks ago rather than from the council who have been involved in discussions with them for several months.  We believe that local residents should be kept fully informed at all times.

The road closure is being put in place to carry out essential bridge replacements of two of the three rail bridges over the road by Bottelino's restaurant and the Outlet Village.  We appreciate the importance of the work being carried out which is scheduled to take place over the weekend of the May Day bank holiday, whilst there is a shutdown of the rail network.  However, access is needed for two weeks either side of the Bank Holiday to allow the work to be carried out safely.
 
We will be working very closely with the Council's planning and highways teams to make sure that the impact of the road closure on local residents is minimised and that other utilities companies take advantage of the closure to ensure that the route is not affected by road works again in the near future.

The Bruce Street Bridges roundabout scheme appears to be finally drawing to a close but we have yet to see whether the completed scheme will work effectively for the residents of Rodbourne.  We note the comments of the Conservative Cabinet Member for Transport, Cllr. Heenan, in the Swindon Advertiser last week, “The work at Bruce Street Bridges has taken far too long and we have already instigated an internal review to find out what happened…we should not see any more hold-ups in this area for quite a while." Clearly, this isn't true with yet another month of traffic frustration on the way for Rodbourne residents.

If you have any specific concerns about the works then please contact us: