Please be aware that the consultation on Highways England’s proposals to upgrade the A66 between Penrith and Scotch Corner starts on Friday 24th September and runs for six weeks until 6th November.
Please see our online petition on Change.org in support of our proposal for a northern bypass which is now online and please encourage lots of people near and far to sign it!
Thanks.
Here is the link to the Highways England Consultation page. There are useful visualisations for each section, including Appleby to Brough:
A66 Northern Trans-Pennine Design Consultation September 2021 – Highways England – Citizen Space
Should you require paper copies of all these documents, please contact Highways England, newly named as National Highways, or I have 4 copies if you contact me.
Warcop & Musgrave Parish Councils have been lobbying Highways England to design a more northerly route which would take the new road away from the villages of Warcop and Sandford as well as individual properties along our section of the route.
While some welcome amendments to their design have been made, we still feel that the new road should be further away to reduce air, noise and visual pollution. We recognise that this would mean part of the road running across a small section of an Area of Outstanding Beauty, but we believe the needs of current and future residents should be more important than preserving a small section of low-grade land currently damaged by the activities of the MOD.
Please can you make sure you attend one of the face to face consultation events and also send in an official consultation form with your views? The more responses they receive saying their current proposals are unacceptable the better. The Warcop Parish Hall dates are Monday 4th to Wednesday 6th October.
Specifically, if they won’t consider our northern bypass proposal, then they can improve their design by a) building the new carriageway between Café 66 and Dyke Nook to the north of the existing road, not the south, including storage ponds; b) between Brough and Warcop, design a straight line new road to the north of the current road, thus reducing the need for complex junctions at Langrigg, Flitholme and Warcop. This would then join with HE’s route to the west of the army playing field.
We have also asked that they consider extending the non-road user section from Moorhouse Lane to Appleby, for cyclists, walkers, horse riders etc. In addition, we have requested that they construct a new footpath from the primary school in Warcop into the centre of the village for road safety reasons.
Here is a link to the consultation dates and venues table: https://apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-7JRFnL-fyeiiYaiwEM2LjhViDAwg8ygWGLv1Jt7lEoyZrdudzMVHlm2dtTWuXSDvpXSQPIt7834jXjyRXCwNNg/messages/@.id==AEIdcLpeOirgYUiAWA5zODiRm2c/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=YMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2
Please remember that this road will be there for hundreds of years so the chosen route must be safe for future generations and as far away from villages and houses as possible.
Thank you.
David Keetley
Chair, Warcop Parish Council