Fresh call to tackle ‘lethal’ Horsham road crossing

Former paramedic Chris Britton first raised concerns about the roundabouts on the A24 in Highwood Mill last July.

But now the 61-year-old Groombridge Way resident has issued a fresh call to introduce traffic control to boost pedestrian safety.

He said: “Since the completion of the roadworks and the downgrading through Broadbridge Heath village, there’s no doubt traffic has significantly increased at these crossing points.

“It would be awful to hear of any serious incident – preventing something from happening is better than trying to fix somebody’s life.”

West Sussex County Council said highways officers met with residents last year to discuss safety concerns and traffic surveys were commissioned.

A spokesman added: “These tended to show that traffic exiting the side road did so safely.”

Major works on the Broadbridge Heath Bypass were finished in February, ten months after they began.

The scheme split the A281 in two from the Tesco roundabout to the Newbridge roundabout.

The route was formerly the A281 (now diverted onto a new east-west link west of the Horsham development area and a new A24 roundabout) and part of the planning approval included downgrading the old A281 Broadbridge Heath bypass to the C622.

Chris added that visibility should be improved at the Highwood junction and called for better signage to be put in place to make it safer for pedestrians to cross.

He said: “People that have mobility problems, sight problems, parents with young children and prams must find it at times to be quite challenging.

“At the end of the day I just feel something is going to happen there – it’s just a matter of time.

“I still consider it very dangerous.”

In an ideal world traffic lights should be installed, Chris said.

But he added: “That’s a very, very expensive task to take on. What they could do is quite simply close the foot paths to stop people from going up there.”

Chris proposed rerouting the path to link up with the footbridge leading between Highwood and Tesco Extra.

He added: “Everybody’s safe completely then.”

A West Sussex County Council spokesperson said: “The other issue highlighted by residents was crossing the slip roads.

“We explained that introducing traffic signals to either of the slip road entry and exit points would be very difficult and could create other potential accident issues at the junctions.

“However, officers said further traffic reviews would be carried out once the Broadbridge Heath improvement scheme and Neighbourhood Centre schemes were completed. These surveys are still planned but delayed due to the artificially-suppressed traffic flows following the Covid-19 lockdown and the risk of misleading data being gathered.”