A resident contacted me earlier this week concerned about the poor condition of parts of the B1281 in Blackhall Colliery. The complainant reported that the westbound side of the road was the worst affected and they felt this had been caused by vehicles heading from the ongoing housing development at Hardwicke Place heading towards Hesleden and the A19.
In response to the resident’s concerns I asked the council’s monitoring and compliance officer to get in touch with the developer to see if there was a particular issue with the cleansing equipment which under usual circumstances is used frequently to keep the road clear of mud and other detritus.
I received the following response last night and I’ll update on developments as soon as I have more information from the officer or developer:
Good Evening Rob
I have received the complaint regarding mud on the road outside the above development. I have recorded it as a complaint and the details will be sent to you once it has been processed.
I have contacted the site and developer this afternoon and they have advised me that the groundwork contractors have been moving clay from the site for the last week and this has caused the excess mud on the carriageway. The site have advised that a brush cleaner has been working almost constantly whilst this has been ongoing.
I will be passing the site tomorrow so should be able to make a better assessment, I will let you know my findings.
Kind Regards
**UPDATE** Wednesday 8 December
Good Morning Rob
Further to our email last week I had contacted the developer to request their cleaning schedule be forwarded to me.
Yesterday I passed the site and noted that the entrance area and the first part of the road towards Castle Eden was in a poor state, with mud and debris being trailed off site from leaving lorries.
I contacted the developer and the site manager responded to me last night. He was on leave yesterday but had visited the area at 4pm and forwarded pictures to me which showed a much cleaner area than mine from the morning.
The current cleaning regime is carried out by a fork lift and brush every two hours. There is no road sweep currently deployed as the fork lift is just as efficient. This is acceptable and is what is detailed in the construction management plan.
I have requested that a once weekly sweep by the external road cleaner is carried out to clean near the kerb edges where the main problem seems to be on Hesleden Road.
I have further requested more regular fork lift cleans on the site roads which would prevent the mud and debris being dragged further onto the main road.
I will be monitoring over the next few weeks so hopefully this will improve the area. I do not feel at this stage I need to escalate to wheel washing as the amount of vehicles leaving the site is currently quite low and effort is being made to retain plant vehicles within the build area so as not to spread further mud and debris.
