Next week, Wessex Water hopes to commence its water main work along London Road from Fussell Wadman to the Windsor Drive roundabout.

This is the section on which signal- controlled, one-way working will be necessary for about 10 weeks.

The work is scheduled to start at 7am on Monday. To speed completion, 7am to 7pm working is intended, five-and-a-half days a week.

The resulting traffic congestion on London Road will draw attention once again to the lack of any relief road around the town centre.

With one exception, all the local authorities involved have become thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of several hundred new houses being imposed on the town's infrastructure, mostly along the London Road. The exception is the County Highways Authority. To its credit, members of the district council, the town council, the Devizes Community Area Planning Partnership, and DASH2, have all made courteous and patient approaches to the county authorities, requesting them either to come up with some traffic relief proposals, or to conduct traffic studies to forecast where road improvements would be most effective.

Wiltshire's highway establishment has been unhelpful, despite all those courteous approaches. Their excuse is lack of funds.

Traffic surveys would cost around £80,000 (about the same as the Devizes Masterplan currently being undertaken by Gillespies).

Wiltshire's official policy is to reduce parking: if Devizes had less of it, there would be fewer cars, and the traffic problem would go away. Indeed, Wiltshire is working in this direction. This is their formal position, but they are not this naive. The truth seems to be, that they are all too well aware of the congestion conclusions of a traffic study, and they are determined to suppress the problem.

This is unacceptable. The county has a responsibility to meet our highway needs, and is evading it. This is despite the fact that Devizes is the only town in the county to have no relief routes around its town centre.

We shall not allow Wiltshire to escape its responsibilities, but if you find yourself at rest on London Road in a traffic queue, you might want to address your feelings to assistant director Alan Feist in Wiltshire County Council Planning.

Jeff Ody

Chairman

The Trust for Devizes