Anger boils over on continuing roads issues
FRUSTRATION is growing over what is claimed is a continuing lack of action by roads maintenance authorities to tackle outstanding potholes and other problems on the Lochaber trunk roads network.
At last week’s April meeting of Spean Bridge, Roy Bridge and Achnacarry Community Council, held at Kilmonivaig Church Hall, chairman John Fotheringham revealed that both the boss of a local haulage firm and one of the area’s MSPs have now offered to get more involved in helping tackle the issue.
Mr Fotheringham told the meeting the haulage operator concerned has offered to speak to Scottish Transport Minister Humza Yousaf, while local MSP Donald Cameron had also offered to request an urgent meeting with Transport Scotland over the issue.
The moves stem from mounting frustration that, despite pledges by trunk roads operator BEAR Scotland and Transport Scotland, stretches of the area’s vital roads are continuing to deteriorate at an alarming rate.
Transport Scotland and BEAR’s representatives met the community council in February, and heard a catalogue of complaints about the local trunk road network.
BEAR has carried out remedial work on various sections of the A82 between Fort William and Spean Bridge this year as weather conditions allow but Mr Fotheringham told the council meeting that it was not good enough.
Mr Fotheringham proceeded to read out the list of potholes and damaged road sections which had been notified to BEAR months ago as needing urgent attention and which had still not been tackled, including the junction of the A82 and A86 in Spean Bridge and the blocked culvert that has affected the village’s woollen mill.
‘It is just wholly incompetent and even if it means having to go to Holyrood to speak directly to Transport Scotland, I’m quite happy to do that,’ said Mr Fotheringham.
One local B&B operator told community councillors that some recent Canadian visitors, who had been coming to the area for a decade, commented how much noticeably worse local roads were this year than in previous years.
And Mr Fotheringham added: ‘The problem is, if you write to the Transport Minister, you get a reply back from a civil servant – but I don’t want a reply from a civil servant. I want a reply from the person elected.’
In his letter of last week to BEAR and Transport Scotland in his capacity as community council chairman, Mr Fotheringham said he appreciated BEAR had been working on local trunk roads during the winter.
But he went on to say that work is progressing far too slowly on tackling the outstanding potholes and other issues which BEAR has previously pledged to fix. ‘Now a local haulage CEO [chief executive officer] has offered to speak to the Transport Minister on our behalf and we have accepted his offer,’ he writes. ‘Maybe then you will take us seriously and deliver what you promise.’