Accident fear due to overgrown scrubland

Councillors are going “round in circles” over who is responsible for maintaining overgrowth near a roundabout in Biddulph, amid road safety fears.
Town councillor Jill Salt said she had raised her concerns with Biddulph North County Coun Mike Broom “multiple times” about visibility on the approach to the Tunstall Road roundabout near Aldi, but said that her emails had been “ignored”.
When asked by the “Chronicle”, County Coun Broom said maintaining the scrubland between the carriageways should fall to Aldi, but the supermarket chain has denied responsibility.
Coun Salt said: “It was previously looked after by Biddulph In Bloom, but it has now been told by the county council that it cannot maintain it for health and safety reasons.”
She said the V-shaped piece of land, which separates the two carriageways, had grown so high that drivers could only see to their right once they were at the junction.
“It means you cannot plan ahead,” she said.
“It’s slowing down traffic because you cannot see to the right properly.
“I’m worried there is going to be an accident and that the county council doesn’t have a maintenance plan in place, because it doesn’t seem to be being tended to.”
She said she had raised her concern with County Coun Broom via email in early September and also asked him about it at his surgery ahead of a recent town council meeting.
She said: “The Reform councillors are refusing to engage with me. Any emails I send, they do not reply and I don’t know if I’m being ignored, or if they are making arrangements in the background, but they are not communicating it to me.
“I am not just a councillor, I am also a constituent and both Mike Broom and Bob Egginton (Biddulph South and Endon) are ignoring every email I send to them.”
County Coun Broom said he was being “bombarded” with emails from several town councillors about issues that he felt they should report themselves, through the county council’s online system.
However, he said: “I will go down and have a look and if there are any bushes causing an issue, then of course I will raise it with the council to have a look at.”
He explained that fellow Reform UK member, Nicola Allen-Hill, who worked with him as a volunteer, had established that Aldi was responsible for the maintenance of the land.
However, a spokesperson for Aldi said that was not the case.
They said that it had not been aware of the issue until it was raised by the “Chronicle” but that it now planned to send a contractor to deal with the overgrowth as a “one-off” to avoid any hazard to customers.
A spokesperson for Staffordshire County Council said the responsibility for maintaining the V-shaped approach to the roundabout lay with Staffordshire Moorlands District Council. County Coun Egginton was asked to comment.
(Photograph: Google Maps).