Cressage villagers concerned over safety of footpath
Residents in a small Shropshire village are pleading with authorities to reconsider classifying a treacherous footpath as safe before someone is seriously injured or killed.
Villagers in Cressage are unhappy that Shropshire Council considers a tiny, busy footpath which is just 600mm wide and adjacent to a busy major A-road, safe to use.
It comes after a planning application was submitted for 7 new houses in the village on the location of an old pub but no public right of way through the site. The planning statement says that the ‘footpath adjacent to the West elevation of the Eagles Inn has not been determined unsafe by the Council Highways Department and therefore remains usable for safe passage’.
Local Councillor Rob Davies explains "Residents are very enthusiastic to get the houses built and make use of the derelict site but not at the cost of safety. Lorries speed through the Village so fast and it is terrifying trying to walk along that stretch, so much so that I won’t walk it with my young children. Doing so with a pushchair or wheelchair is impossible.
"To make things even more interesting, a local villager officially registered a permissive right of way through the site in 2009 with the authorities because of historic access. This doesn’t seem to have been acknowledged yet.
"We have a lot of families with small children in the village and people who use wheelchairs and mobility scooters. The average width of a wheelchair is 650mm which makes safe passage impossible."
The Department for Transport suggests the minimum unobstructed width for pedestrians should generally be 2000mm. Inclusive Mobility (2002) advises the width of a footway should be 2000mm with an absolute clear minimum width of 1000mm in exceptional cases.
This is far less than the dangerously narrow 600mm footpath in Cressage categorised safe by Shropshire Highways.
Residents want an open conversation with the authorities to understand and challenge their decision and are also pleading with the developers to reconsider installing a safe public right of way through the planned site for the safety and wellbeing of all.
