Traffic lights and gates needed to control traffic at new bungalows developments

Access to the land, of Ledbury Road in Athersley South, was one of several concerns raised by residents from the surrounding area before the plans were approved by councillors at Barnsley’s planning regulatory board. Others included access for emergency service vehicles and arrangements for waste bin collections, which will see residents having to wheel their own bins along a long drive to reach the road where recycling lorries make collections. Even then, there were issues raised about space at the roadside to leave up to eight extra bins to await different collection lorries, leading committee chairman Coun Doug Birkinshaw to ask: “Can we not paint lines on the floor, so they know where to put bins? “If you spell it out to them where the bins have to go, there can be no argument,” he said. It was agreed that the council’s highways department would be consulted to find the best practical solution, which could involve leaving bins at the mouth of the drive, if there is space. The gates and traffic lights will work by allowing traffic in one direction only, with priority given to vehicles entering the site from the access drive which runs off Wingfield Road. Vehicles wanting to leave would be held back to allow approaching traffic to leave the highway safely first. Councillors were told the site had historically been used for garages but had been out of use for years, with planning permission granted for one bungalow in 2016. Surrounding residents have raised concerns that a new access could be created from Ledbury Road, but the meeting was told any plan for that would need its own planning approval. There were also worries that the site had a history of flooding during heavy rain, though the meeting heard that both Yorkshire Water’s experts and Barnsley Council drainage staff were happy that proposed arrangements were adequate to cope with conditions on site. *An application to convert a former builder’s yard in Wombwell into bedsits has been deferred to allow councillors to make a site visit. Council planners had recommended the change of use for the building, in Melville Street close to the town centre, to be approved but councillors raised concerns over addition parking in an area which is already congested. Melville Street is blocked to through traffic with a ‘hammer head’ close to the building, but space there is needed for turning. One parking bay would have been created as part of the change, though it would have provided six units of accommodation. The meeting was told that if the building, currently disused, was brought back into use as a workshop it would generate some traffic in its own right and that planners felt the difference between that and the proposed new use was small enough to justify the change. However, Coun Dick Wraith said parking in the area was bad, with six modern houses built there recently requiring street parking as well as the traditional terraced housing.