More than £7,000 spent in county council blunder

More than £7,000 has been spent by the county council on plans which fell out of its remit.
Picture by Liz PearcePicture by Liz Pearce
Picture by Liz Pearce

Consultation over a proposed traffic regulation order (TRO) at the Oving Road A27 junction cost West Sussex County Council an estimated £7,140 despite the road being the responsibility of Highways England.

A spokesman for the county council said it had acted with 'the best intent' working with the community on the proposed changes.

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Speaking at a South Chichester County Local Committee last night (Tuesday, March 3) a highways officer said: "We should be doing things to determine who has control and in this case that check was not directly undertaken.

"We progressed through further investigation the road was in control of Highways England. Quite useful whilst it was definitely an error on our part and having identified it we have no choice but to withdraw it."

Simon Oakley, Conservative councillor for Chichester East said: "This highlights the complexity that we face having a major park of the local road network and certainly the impact this is going to be on of Highways' movements.

"As it will be advertised I would hope that the county council will respond to the consultation."

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A West Sussex County Council spokesperson said: "We acted with the best intent to engage with the community on the proposed changes to traffic controls at the Oving Road/A27 junction.

However, on further assessment of the plans, it recently became clear that all the carriageway which would be affected by the proposed changes is, in fact, on Highways England’s land and network. The county council cannot consider Traffic Regulation Orders where it is not the highway authority.

“This means that we can no longer progress the Traffic Regulation Order, so the petition was not included on the County Local Committee for South Chichester agenda on 3 March. We have written to the organisers of the petition and apologised for the lateness of this change.

“West Sussex County Council is working with Highways England to progress matters.

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“The overall cost to the council of processing a TRO application will mostly depend on the amount of officer time taken to progress the application and deal with correspondence.

“We do not operate a time recording system to monitor the time spent on individual cases, but calculate the average cost of processing a TRO associated with a development or third-party application as being £7,140.”

A Highways England spokesman said: "Oving Crossroads is the only traffic light controlled junction on the Chichester Bypass and congestion there would be made worse by extra traffic going to and from the Shopwyke Lakes development.

"That's why closing Oving crossroads was one of the planning conditions for the Shopwyke Lakes development, to be replaced by better, safer access to the north.

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"We are happy to take responsibility for the traffic order from West Sussex County Council and are working to find the best way forward. The traffic order is about the roadworks needed to implement the changes: it is not revisiting the decision."