Station Rd to be closed to tackle flooding problem.

Morrisons Crossing flooding to be tackled

Station Road closed outside Morrisons

After a hard fought campaign, with members of the Focus Team pushing officers on a regular basis to get something done, we are delighted to announce that on Monday 11th S Glos is going try to do something about the flooding on the crossing when it rains. its a complete mess on a wet day with people wading through water and getting splattered by cars. Because it means closing the road we have been pushing S Glos to do it now, during lockdown, when the roads are a bit quieter. They have now agreed, so Station Rd will be closed outside Morrisons from Monday for up to 21 days. We don't think it will take that line, but they always give some leeway.

This has been a longstanding problem, and we are delighted we have managed to get it pushed to the top of the queue at last.

Council agrees to investigate flooding at Morrisons to Armadillo crossing

Some news. Earlier this week we blogged about flooding in the MIU car park. One resident asked Focus for an update on the terrible problems with flooding at the pedestrian lights from Morrisons to the Armadillo.

Waiting at Morrisons to cross when it has been raining you get soaked by passing cars and then often the pool of water is so deep it gets into people's shoes as they try to cross.

This has been going on for years -and the Focus Team have raised it any number of times with officials. South Glos has had various attempts to find the cause (it is not anything obvious and seems to date back to when Morrisons was part of Newman's factory and where the water went then - as one effort to solve it concluded all the water just goes into a soak away under Morrison's car park so when the water table is high it just sits there with nowhere to go!!)

But today we got a response from South Glos, which for the first time recognised how serious the problem is. They've run out of simple solutions - the next investigation will involve closing the road for two days whilst they dig up quite a big area and try to track what is going on.

S Glos say:
"As you have said it’s an issue that has been on-going on for some time now. We have tried to resolve this issue in the past and have recently utilised a lane closure in an attempt to determine the issue without much success. 

The next step would be to close the road and spend a good couple of days locating where the fault/faults are. A road closure will cause some disturbance but we believe it needs to be done. At present this is not a high priority, we have had some major floods over the last few weeks and we must tackle these first.

Its on the to do list and we will have to find a slot to do the work."

We have gone back to South Glos to suggest that it whilst nobody like road closures, we all want this sorted as soon as possible - doing it at the same time as they close Church Rd for resurfacing this summer would make sense (although if we have a dry summer that would be useless - it needs to be when there is water around......)

Our thanks to S Glos officers for replying so quickly - now to find a slot to do the investigations. 

Morrisons – different sides to the story

Local councillors recently asked South Glos to investigate whether, if Morrisons move out of their warehouse on Armstrong Way, the planning permission could be changed so that it would no longer been used as a distribution depot.

This would have the effect of removing a good deal of heavy goods traffic from roads in Yate and the surrounding villages – Iron Acton and Rangeworthy residents have been complaining for years about the volume of lorry movements.

The question is whether the site is appropriate for distribution use now – would planning permission be granted if it was a new site? In view of the other traffic problems in the area, quite possibly not. This is being interpreted as local councillors trying to drive Morrisons out of town, but it’s just asking for a reassessment of the site in the light of changed circumstances.

Whatever happens, some lorries will still have to go in and out of Yate, to bring things in local people want and need and to take away things that are made here, but with major distribution centres you have lorry traffic coming in and going out again with little benefit to local people. Those sorts of uses are far better right next to motorway junctions so that the lorries don’t have to trundle up and down the narrow country roads or get tangled with town rush hours.

What would be the overall effect on local employment? Even if the planning permission was changed, this would still be employment land. Different employment uses could quite possibly bring more jobs – South Glos officials say that distribution provides a very low number of jobs for the area of land taken up.

But are Morrisons definitely going? Morrisons management indicated quite a while back – long before any changes of weight restrictions on rural roads - that they would be closing some but not all of their smaller depots once their Bridgwater depot opened. Workers at Morrisons however have been given the impression that the Yate depot WILL close.

Steve Webb is going to be visiting the Morrisons depot, and we’ll ask him to report back what he finds out.