Action call on danger road

A mother is starting a petition to highlight problems caused by speeding traffic through a village.

Mrs Kathy Hyde-Barker, of Main Street, Kneesall, is one of several residents concerned about the increasing number of accidents in the village.

In the latest incident on Tuesday, a six-tonne lorry overturned near the Angel Inn on Main Street, crashing into a garden wall.

The lorry, carrying glass panels, blocked the road for nearly seven hours. The road was re-opened at 7pm. There have been no suggestions by police that the lorry was speeding.

In another accident last month a vehicle damaged a barn near the telephone box on Main Street.

Last year a wall at the former village hall buildings, on land owned by the Thoresby Estate, was knocked down.

Mrs Hyde-Barker said she had written to the county council many times about accidents on the A616 but had not received an adequate response.

Mrs Hyde-Barker has four children aged six to 14. She said it was dangerous for them to walk along the road because of the speed that vehicles travelled through the village.

“There is just not enough warning. It is a 60 mph limit, then straight into a village,” she said.

The overturned lorry demolished the garden wall of Mr John Leatt, of Main Street. It also caught part of his house as it overturned.

He did not know what the long-term damage would be and said engineers were coming out to check.

The family were not in at the time.

They have lived in the village for ten months, having moved from Halam.

Mr Leatt said the frequency of accidents in the village was a concern and he thought speed cameras or a traffic calming system could be introduced to make drivers more aware of the speed.

He and his wife, Mrs Olivia Leatt, have two children, Isabel (3) and Reuben (15 months).

Both children attend the pre-school at St Bartholomew’s Church, Kneesall.

“They could have been walking home from there as that particular time is busy for mothers picking up their children,” he said.

Parents use the 150m stretch of footpath from the 30mph speed limit signs at the entrance to the village and the Angel Inn on Main Street. It is about 2ft wide at the narrowest point.

A meeting held to discuss the possibility of the footpath being widened was a waste of time, according to Mr Gerald Bates (80) of Fortune House, Kneesall.

He said he and other landowners offered to give Nottinghamshire County Council about 4ft of land beside the footpath to enable it to be widened.

Mr Bates said villagers were disgusted when a representative from the county council told them there was no money available to widen the path.

Mr Bates said there had been two or three near-misses on the footpath.

He said the county council had spent thousands of pounds carrying out highways work in other villages.

Mr Bates said the council had agreed to provide a temporary interactive speed sign at one end of the village but residents wanted one at both ends.

A temporary sign can be displayed in one location for a maximum of three months and cannot return to the same location within the next 12 months.

Mr Bates said: “People do not just speed at one end. They speed at both ends.”

The county council previously said the village did not meet the council’s criteria for a permanent sign based on traffic flow.

A spokesman for the county council said: “We will be removing some vegetation that is covering parts of the footpath on the A616 in Kneesall to increase its width.

“In addition, we will be putting in bids for county council funding to widen a stretch of the footpath.”