A NEWSHAM parish councillor has described a stretch of the A66 as a “corridor of shame” claiming litter on the verges has been allowed to collect for 14 years.
Cllr Chris Brown has tried unsuccessfully for the past three years to petition the former Richmondshire District Council and now North Yorkshire County Council to have the roadside between Smallways and Mainsgill Farm Shop cleared.
The county council says it is too dangerous to clean the roadside along the single-carriageway section and it can only be done when National Highways closes the road to carry out work or to do inspections.
Cllr Brown said: “The problem with that strategy is that those roadworks tend to be infrequent and the local council gets short notice of them.”
He added that road-closures tend to be at night to be less disruptive to traffic, requiring workers to volunteer for overtime work.
He said: “In reality, yes, it is a strategy on paper, but in the real world it never works because of those limitations.”
Despite appealing to council leader Cllr Carl Les, chief executive Richard Filton, assistant director of highways Barrie Mason and corporate director of environment Karl Battersby, nothing had been achieved, he said.
Cllr Brown has also, through Richmondshire MP Rishi Sunak, received responses from National Highways, Defra and the Department for Transport – none of which has had a positive impact on the situation.
He described the prime minister’s office as a “post office”, simply forwarding the councillor’s complaints to different departments, and then sending the replies back.
Cllr Brown also claims an option for the county council to ask National Highways to implement traffic management while litter picking is carried out has not been undertaken.
Some success was achieved in August last year when National Highways organised road closures to carry out road and barrier inspections.
He was then informed by the county council’s street scene manager that litter pickers had cleared the dual carriageway section of the A66 and had collected almost two tonnes of rubbish, confirming the extent of the problem.
However, the manager also wrote: “Unfortunately, we were unable to pick the most heavily littered stretch of the road” due to National Highways cancelling some of the intended road closures.
Cllr Brown says about 18,000 vehicles use the A66 each day, many of which carry tourists, and the litter does not reflect well on North Yorkshire. He added that North Yorkshire County Council’s excuses for not carrying out its statutory duty to clean the verges does not wash, because the single-carriageway section in County Durham between Greta Bridge and Cross Lanes Farm Shop is kept comparatively neat and tidy.
North Yorkshire County Council’s highways area manager, Jayne Charlton, said: “We appreciate the concerns of locals and the travelling public about litter on the A66.
“Please be assured that we take littering very seriously, and we are committed to doing everything we can to keep North Yorkshire’s landscape beautiful.”
She added: “We are responsible for litter picking on the A66.
“However, it wouldn’t be safe for this to take place when vehicles are using it, so litter picking on single carriageways can only be carried out during planned road closures.
“We are liaising with National Highways to ensure we are notified of road closures, which would allow our operatives to work safely. We hope this will happen later this year.”
