County Council Receives The Pothole Petition

December 1st 2017

On Friday, November 30th I travelled to Lincoln to the County Council offices, where I handed in the petition to properly resurface St Bernard's Avenue. 860 people had signed it, a mixture of online and offline signatures, with the majority of those signatures being paper ones. The petition went to LCC's democratic services for verification and counting.

The next steps

At the LCC full council meeting of Friday, 15th December I will present the petition to Councillor Richard Davies, the portfolio holder for Highways, and speak for up to five minutes on the importance of the petition to those who signed. And it is important. Whilst gathering signatures I spoke to many people who had big, expensive problems with their cars due to potholes. For local cyclists, the road is both bone-shaking and dangerous because of the need to either swerve to avoid ruts or risk going over them and coming off the bike.

It has also been instructive to meet people who have problems with the noise and shaking as large vehicles run over potholes on St Bernard's Avenue. There are also people with medical conditions who experience a lot of difficulty and pain as a result of travelling along the uneven road.

The council meeting will be broadcast online, and there will be a link to the recording on the county council website. It is also a public meeting, so members of the public may sit in the public gallery to watch the proceedings.

The county council must act

Locally people have been very supportive of this campaign, and keen to see the road fixed. "It's a disgrace" is a phrase I heard all too often whilst discussing the Avenue. It has been disheartening to watch the road surface decline in quality and safety whilst the county council have continually delayed making full repairs to a busy part of the town. It will now be up to the county council to listen to the people of Louth and beyond who signed this petition, and to prioritise the full resurfacing of St Bernard's Avenue. The decision will rest with Councillor Davies; I hope he makes the right one.