Yesterday I had a meeting with staff from the County Council’s highways department for them to update me on proposals for safety improvements on the A505 between Baldock and Royston.

The small piece of good news is that they have decided that work on banning right turns from the Littlington turning is something that can be funded from the safety budget (this is apparently the junction with the worst record of accidents where somebody has been injured). This means that the changes should be designed next year and the work done the year after.

Any changes at any of the other junctions, which could cost up to about £4 million, will just be added to a list of things to be done at some time in the future. The idea seems to be that they might be funded from future developments, which means that nothing will happen for at least ten years, probably longer.

This is clearly not good enough. If it is going to take that long to find the several million pounds that any of the changes will cost we need something done in the meantime. An obvious solution would be to cut the speed limit to 50 mph past the Ashwell station junction at least.

I have told them that they need to do something to improve the safety in the short term while they are looking for the money for the “ultimate” scheme and the engineers have agreed to look into this. They can’t tell me when this will be done but have promised that they will tell me within a couple of weeks.