Challenging the County Council over Exning's infrastructure notices

I spoke at the Suffolk County Council chamber in Ipswich to seek to change the way residents are notified about infrastructure works. This comes after many residents came back to find barriers sprung up across the village with no prior warning from anyone. This is the question I asked our County Council:

“Hello. My name is Jon London, District Councillor for Exning.

In July, Cadent started two months of rolling gas works on one of the main roads into the village; with zero notification.  Residents returned home one evening to find barriers blocking 75% of local parking, chaos! Later we received a week’s notice that our main road would be entirely shut, bifurcating the village for 6 weeks.  A 20 second drive becoming a twenty-minute detour through Cambridgeshire.

County officers have politely explained to me that Cadent are responsible for notifying residents.  Cadent have politely explained to me that they are under no legal obligation to notify anyone.

Please could you instruct your Officers that when granting planning permission for major infrastructure road works to notify the relevant County member, the relevant District member and the relevant Town or Parish Council? 

For the price of an e-mail residents will be fore-warned, and an awful lot of stress for Suffolk residents will be avoided.  Thank you.”

I hope that there will now be reforms to the council system so that residents and their local councillors are at least notified the next time infrastructure projects go on in their local area, I will monitor the situation for any progress.

You may have also seen an article about this in the Newmarket Journal!