Devizes Town Council Seek Road Improvement Plans from County Hall

It’s the satirist in me which smirks at the audacity of placing a right-sided “road narrows” roadwork sign on the last bend before Potterne, up Whistley Road. In all actual fact, the road widens at this point, rather it’s potholes the size of moon craters, on both sides of the road, which cause it to be an ineffectual passing place, unless you own one of those American monster trucks, and if you do, navigating the B-road in question wouldn’t be advisable.

In fairness, for your car’s protection, gradually sinking traffic cones have been strategically placed in the singularities (that’s what physicists call the centre of a black hole, by the way; a point where extremely large amounts of matter are crushed into an infinitely small amount of space, such as your alloys and bumper.)

Secondary fairness, the dilapidation of tarmac is as never-ending as washing dishes, and extreme weather conditions are like your kids, bringing dirty crockeries to the kitchen when you thought you’d just finished. Washing up is a perpetual task, but if you don’t persevere it accumulates, to the point you’re eating breakfast from the dog bowl; see where I’m going with this, Wiltshire Council?

The problem remains, Whistley Road is not the exception to the rule, rather the standard these days in our country lanes’ decrepitude; take a journey up The Kings Road in Easterton, hardly fit for a king at all, and a wonder why on earth it needs speed bumps when natural depressions in the road bigger than the actual village itself, you’d like to think, should prevent anyone in their right mind from speeding.

One would like to imagine accelerating over fifteen miles an hour might yet be a very real possibility once you’ve boarded our main roads, only to find their condition is hardly better. Yet, at Tuesday’s Devizes Town Council Meeting, Councillor Jonathan Hunter pointed to his understanding that for the financial year 2021-22 Wiltshire Council was awarded 22,924,000 smackers from the Government’s Highway Maintenance Fund to pay for a range of highway improvements, begging the question why our local roads still make the Giant’s Causeway look like an autobahn.

Johnathan, the kind of Conservative which makes you realise not all of them would piggyback their crippled grandmothers to reach a bottle of Bollinger from a top shelf, put forward a proposal to inquire how the money has been spent. Putting to DTC, “it would be helpful to understand how this funding has supported highways improvements in the county; if any substantive project in the last twelve months have been undertaken in Devizes, and if this government funding was used to deliver them.”

“Furthermore,” he added, because councillors tend to go on a bit, “Devizes Town Council seeks visibility regarding the plan for this year’s road improvement programme within the Devizes area, and what are the local priorities.” And it would seem the Council agreed.

“With the poor state of the local road network,” Jonathan told Devizine, excited by his proposal being met, “including many sections of surface degradation and dangerous potholes, it is encouraging that this proposal was fully agreed by Town Council members.”

“For reasons of road user safety, travel inconvenience and the cost of vehicle maintenance it is important that local road users and pedestrians should be able to receive a full progress update on the current roads programme and importantly receive clear visibility about tax payer funded plans for the local road network that serves Devizes.”

“Currently, to find out anything about road repair plans, you have to don some deep-sea-diving apparel and search in the very deep and murky waters of the online kingdom, even Jacques Cousteau would find that a challenge!”

Very well, Johnathan, well done, but we do the funny bits if you don’t mind! But it would be good to know, in this era whereby you can triple the value of your car simply by filling it up with petrol, that you’re not going to forsake your tyres on the next bend, unless you’re a Kwik-Fit manager.

We look forward to the possibility of seeing the plans by Wiltshire Council; roads don’t fix themselves and no one said it was going to be easy, but you choose the bloomin’ job! For everyone on Facebook, you can join in the fun at the Devizes Pot Hole Spotter’s Club, here!