Controversial plans to close a busy road in Burnham-On-Sea for a month and introduce a nine-mile diversion during roadworks have been scrapped.
Burnham-On-Sea.com reported last month that work to build a new pedestrian crossing in Berrow Road is due to start on February 2nd and will last four weeks.
However, Somerset County Council also planned to shut the road during the work and send traffic via a lengthy diversion route around Brent Knoll instead.
Berrow Parish Council Clerk Lynn Smith told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “My Council was extremely concerned to heard about the closure of Berrow Road for a period of one month. The proposed diversion was over nine miles long and this would have caused huge disruption to the people of north Burnham, Berrow and Brean.”
But a spokesperson for the County Council told Burnham-On-Sea.com this week that the need for a closure has been re-thought. “This new crossing has been a community priority for some time, so we are pleased to be able to fulfil their wishes. We are happy to say that we have now agreed a way of completing the scheme without a road closure, and this is always our aim with any road scheme.”
County Councillor Peter Burridge-Clayton, who has campaigned for the crossing, said: “The timing has been planned to cause the least disruption on what is clearly a busy road. I am delighted that we have been given a start date and I am pleased that the crossing will be in place before the start of the summer holiday season.”
The new crossing will be installed on the busy stretch of road outside the Kathleen Chambers care home, operated by the Royal National Institute Of The Blind, near the Texaco petrol station.
The work was previously delayed after flooding last winter meant higher-priority road repair schemes had to go ahead first.
