Call for road safety improvements to ‘nightmare’ A22 Nutley junction

On Monday (September 20), East Sussex County Council’s lead member for transport and environment considered a petition calling for road safety measures at the junction of Nursery Lane with the A22 at Nutley. 

Petitioners had raised concerns about parking around the junction blocking sightlines, both from drivers attempting to pass it and leave it. 

In a report to Cllr Dowling, officers said the council’s road safety team had looked at installing a bollard at the junction to deter drivers cutting across it. However, this was deemed unsuitable for the location. 

Officers had also looked at restricting parking to improve visibility, but this was not considered appropriate given that Wealden does not have civil parking enforcement. 

Officers also said a concealed entrance sign would not be highways appropriate. But they did add that the existing signs are due to be replaced and that a feasibility study may find further options.

Even so, officers said the junction was not considered to be a high priority for any improvement works at present. This was partly because there had not been any injury crashes at the junction within the last three years.

In a report to Cllr Dowling, a council officer said: “There is a limited amount of funding to develop local transport improvements and these need to be targeted to those schemes which will be of greatest benefit to local communities.

“To help the council prioritise the numerous requests for improvements, it developed a process to determine which schemes should be funded through the council’s Integrated Transport Programme.

“The request for a potential scheme to implement some form of traffic management measures at this location has been assessed to determine if it might be considered further. 

“However, the assessment did not achieve the benchmark score to enable it to be taken forward at the present time.”

Ward councillor Roy Galley, who presented the petition to the council back in May, raised concerns about this advice however. 

He said: “It is an extremely difficult junction and officers and I have discussed this on a number of occasions in recent years.

“I accept the difficulty in finding a solution, however this is nonetheless a very disappointing report. I hope that officers have had some experience of trying to pull out of this junction, because it is a nightmare. 

“Not many of us need to do it because we are going up and down the main road, but if you are coming up Nursery Lane, going either way, particularly turning right, it is extraordinarily difficult.”

Cllr Galley went on to express scepticism about the worth of conducting a feasibility study when many options had already been considered by officers. 

In light of this advice, Cllr Dowing (who said she had been regular user of the road herself) confirmed that the county council did not consider the junction to be a priority location for improvements at this time. 

However, she also advised petitioners to contact Maresfield Parish Council to see if they would support a feasibility study into whether any measures could be considered for part funding through the community match initiative