Ben Maguire takes A30 village rat-running fears to National Highways

Your sat nav spots a queue on the A30 and offers a shortcut. A few minutes later you are squeezing past oncoming traffic on a lane barely wide enough for one car, in a village that never asked for the extra visitors. For people living and commuting near the A30 junction improvement works, that has been the complaint.

North Cornwall’s Liberal Democrat MP, Ben Maguire, has now taken those concerns to an urgent meeting with the Regional Director of National Highways, passing on worries raised by local residents, parish councils and Cornwall Council representatives.

What National Highways has agreed

Since the meeting, National Highways has confirmed it is working with sat nav companies to keep drivers off small village roads. It has introduced single-lane traffic management for the whole of the roadworks, and has put up ‘local access only’ and ‘ignore sat nav’ signs to deter rat-running.

It has also agreed to greater engagement with local stakeholders, and has accepted Ben’s request for an urgent site visit. No date for that visit has been given.

What the MP says

Ben was critical of how the works were planned. “Local commuters have been paying the price for National Highways’ failure to properly plan these works and foresee the gridlocked chaos,” he said.

“I’ve been in close contact with the local parish councils, Cornwall Council representatives, and lots of residents who live and commute in the area, and I put their most recent concerns directly to National Highways in an urgent meeting today.

“I’m glad they agreed to a number of the measures we’ve been pushing for, as well as much more engagement and an urgent site visit. But I’ll keep up the pressure until the disruption is properly under control.”

He thanked local Cornwall Councillors Damon Dennis, Adrian Parsons and Adam Paynter, along with local parish councils and the wider community, “for working with me so constructively on this.”

📷North Cornwall MP Ben Maguire meeting National Highways about the A30 works