By Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter
Cheshire East has launched a new “falls prevention strategy” – just four days after councillors voted to consult the public on plans to switch off the street lights!
Around 2,275 people aged 65 and over in Cheshire East are admitted to hospital each year following a fall.
Dear Editor
Re: Coole Lane WILL be gritted after CEC reinstates it to winter programme – By Belinda Ryan, 26th July 2022 (Nantwich News)
I read this article with a mixture of relief and despair; relief that at two dangerous routes have been reinstated to the Cheshire East Council’s gritting routes but despair that so many routes have been effectively ignored.
By Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter
Coole Lane between Nantwich and Audlem which was axed from Cheshire East’s winter gritting programme have been re-instated following a number of accidents.
The route will be gritted again following six incidents, and is one of two to be reinstated including Brook Street in Macclesfield.
By Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter
District nurses have been unable to reach some patients since Cheshire East stopped gritting certain routes and there have been several accidents on icy roads, councillors said.
Cheshire East Council axed a number of roads from its gritting schedule this winter following the introduction of new scoring criteria which adheres to national guidelines.
By Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter
Cheshire East Council has refused to allow its councillors to use their ward budgets to pay for gritting on treacherous roads because it goes against its new winter policy.
The Labour/Independent administration axed around 100 roads from its winter gritting route when it introduced its new policy this winter – including busy rural routes like Coole Lane and Checkley Lane near Nantwich.
Organisations and residents were consulted over changes to the winter gritting strategy in Cheshire East, council chiefs said today.
Many have aired anger over changes to the winter gritting routes, which has seen busy rural roads like Coole Lane and Checkley Lane near Nantwich no longer being gritted.
Council chiefs who withdrew a rural lane from its winter gritting route, today admitted they had to grit part of it after pressure from Cheshire Police.
Highways were called out by police after officers attended the latest in a series of accidents on Coole Lane, between Nantwich and Audlem.
On 7th January 2022, since being cut from the winter gritting routes by CEC, yet another serious road incident caused by icy conditions occurred on Coole Lane, near Audlem.
My colleague, Cllr Rachel Bailey (Audlem) referred to the “carnage” now occurring on this lane which has highlighted the unacceptable costs to road users, blue light services and to Cheshire East Council being incurred by this poorly considered policy.
By Belinda Ryan, local democracy reporter
Three days of icy, non-gritted roads near Nantwich and Audlem saw “three catastrophic accidents and the school bus cancelled”, the former leader of Cheshire East Council said.
Cllr Rachel Bailey (Audlem, Con) told a full council she had not intended speaking on the winter gritting programme and had planned to ask a question about home school transport.
Dear Editor,
It’s now nearly two years since I ‘called in’ the CEC Labour/Independents Cabinet decision to cut winter gritting routes and six months since a decision was made somewhere in the corridors of Cheshire East Council, that despite a second consultation, confirmed the cutting of miles of the highways network from the Adverse Winter Weather gritting scheme.
Dear Editor,
To Cllrs Browne and Corcoran.
In launching your 2022/23 budget consultation you claim a balanced four-year budget but totally ignore the impact of ‘your policy’ of cuts to rural areas and passing on cost to Parish Council’s via your ‘highway pilot top up scheme/price list’.
Coole Lane in Nantwich has seen another crash – the third in three days – after Cheshire East Council removed it from its winter gritting route.
The latest accident involved a skip lorry which crashed off the road into the ditch.
Dear Editor
Each day more and more residents are finding out that Winter Gritting is being cut from some of our rural and semi-rural roads.
They are only now realising how that will affect them and they are expressing their feelings of displeasure and outrage at this decision, taken recently, by Cheshire East’s Labour/Independent administration.
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