Welcome to the obscure and dangerous world of

I live on the Burley Road in Brockenhurst, but received no notification about the pinch points - until one was put in front of my house. Then I saw how they were constructed, how many there were, and where they were placed. It all seemed like poor local government.

To find out what process, decided on these, authorised how they were constructed and placed, and what alternatives were considered, I wrote to all involved, and searched many web sites. The letters exchanged are on this site.

About forty other people have sent letters or e-mails with their concerns. For the dangers they note, see below. For the letters click, letters. To leave comments to be added to the site click, comments.

To date, four cars have been written off, a cyclist seriously injured, and a horse and a deer killed.

 

It seems the pinch points are the result of an unrecorded decision at County Council level, and the justification was animal accidents.

But trying to find out what proper, or any, process was followed, has unearthed everthing from deceipt to farce. But see below:

The Context.

http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/looking-after/campaigns/animal-accidents is the link on the National Park web site showing maps of where animal accidents have occurred. This part of the Burley Road does not show as particularly unusual for a forest road. I note ten stretches of road in the forest with animal accident densities much worse. But look for yourself.

As reported in the Lymington Times, recent animal deaths are at an all-time low. It also pointed out most deaths occur at night and result from driver inattention (not speed). The pinch points themselves are likely to distract drivers. A horse was killed at night close to pinch point, although wearing a reflective collar. The confusion of the many reflectors on the pinch points now makes these collars less noticeable. Several letters to me, including from horse owners, have made this point.

The Verderers also have data on accidents at http://www.verderers.org.uk/weekly_accidents.pdf
They seem to vary randomly from  week to week, but more so when the sun is low, or in fog. The conditions which give increased risk of collision with the pinch point posts, or distraction by them?

http://www.verderers.org.uk/roadaccs.pdf shows longer term trends. The survival ratio of ponies turned out to ponies killed has been steadily improving for years despite increased traffic. But this is not acknowledged. (Unlike Dartmoor - "Thanks for driving The Moor carefully").

As chartered civil engineer, the late and much missed, Ian Smail, asks, "Why has this stretch of road been given this brutal approach?" Why did it have to be this expensive and potentially hazardous scheme? There were other possibilities. So who made the decision and how was it recorded?

(Left) The New Forest is a special place, and reinforcing this are a number of bye laws. Cycling on the grass at the side of a highway contravenes bye law 6.(1).

So, above, which way would you go?

What happened at County Council level?

The County Council and their Highways Authority, shortly before they made redundancies and cut back services, spent £35,000 on these pinch points, without recording the process of authorisation or the justification.
My first letter to Cllr Thornber was sent on 16th Sept 2010. He did not acknowledge it, or reply. Questioned eleven months later in Aug 2011 by a Barrister appointed by the NFDC, he claimed "that he had no record of a letter having been received from Allan Hendry."
This is an astonishingly statement. Consider:

The same letter went to Dr Julian Lewis MP, who on 21 Sept replied, “I have written to Ken Thornber to ask him to respond to the concerns you raise.”
It also went to Stuart Jarvis, at HCC, who responded on 27th Sept, with a copy to Cllr Mr K Thornber
And to Cllr Holding, who told the Barrister that she "forwards letters to Cllr Thornber if they appeared to fall within his remit." This would.
On 26 Nov 2010 my letter in the Lymington Times said, “I have sent letters. Those to our County elected representative are unacknowledged and unanswered.” This is Cllr Thornber's local paper.
Responding in the paper, County Cllr Mel Kendal, wrote, “Councillor Thornber, as local county councillor, was involved throughout this process. ... I can reassure Mr Hendry that his comments have been noted.”

Cllr Thornber finally responded to one of my letters on 27th Oct 2011, more than a year later. My original letter was a legitimate enquiry by someone he was elected to represent. The subject may have been inconvenient, but for Cllr Thornber not to reply, then say he had "no record", seems like dismissive arrogance.

In Dec 2011, I sent the above double accident photo to Cllr Thornber, who in his reply dismissed this as an "example of driver behaviour." He goes on to add "one accident is too many and it is this that has prompted the Road Safety Team here at Hampshire County Council to take the action it did" (install the pinch points).
You work that out.

Every response from Cllrs Thornber and Kendal to letters from myself and others has been this sort of fudge and obfuscation. Two of us have even resorted to the Freedom of Information Act.

The person on the left is is an adult.

In his response in the Lymington Times on 26th November Cllr Mel Kendal admitted that the decision process had "not been formally recorded". For the full texts click elected

Whatever the word "formally" means, this incredible admission from Cllr Kendal then also drew e-mails from Brockenhurst residents Mr Graveling and Dr Bedford. These are also shown.

The exchanges between Mr Graveling and Cllr Kendal include some amazing statements from Cllr Kendal. In order:

Dec 22. "Where motorists ignore a speed of limit of 40 miles per hour, logic suggests that in the absence of anything else they are unlikely to obey a speed limit of 30 miles per hour."
The police data now obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the speed limit is generally obeyed, and the speeds of most cars were tightly bunched around the 40mph limit.

Dec 22. "relatively straight country roads, such as this".
At one end, three of the pinch points, and questionably a fourth, are on bends. At the other end, two are not just on bends, but over the brow of a hill as well.

Jan 19. "Let me put it this way: millions of people ask for a 1/4 inch drill bit each year, not because they want the drill bit, but because they want a 1/4 inch hole." Note the underlining - telling a man who has worked as a manufacturing consultant to eight FTSE 100 companies what a drill does. Mr Graveling responded simply:
"I do not understand your reply as it does not address the issues my previous e-mail raised."

This correspondence might suggest that it is Cllr Kendal himself who had forgotten the first law of holes.

What would the driver here have concentrated on? The pony - or on which way the cyclists would go?

For the full text of correspondance with elected council members click elected and for the Highways Authority click HCC. HCC say they will be keeping a record of comments received. Chief Executive, Stuart Jarvis', e-mail link is here.

(Left) If more of those are coming, we might as well just stay on the grass.
And that is what is happening. It is noticeable that once a group of cyclists has been forced onto the grass a couple of times, they start to use it when there is traffic, even away from the pinch points.
This road is now training the benefits of breaking New Forest bye law 6.(1) and riding over the forest grass.

Quite separately from Mr Graveling's correspondence above, Mr Graham Swetman has also been good enough to let me have a copy of the letter he sent to Cllr Thornber. In addition to many other points, it invokes the Freedom of Information Act to request "a copy of the minutes of the Council meeting at which the decision was made, and the supporting risk assessment".

The reply, dated 8 Jan, makes no mention of a risk assessment. It only refers to the minutes of the Hampshire Action Team meeting of 9 April 2010. They state: "Councillors were advised that the list of Traffic Management Schemes is very ambitious and is dependent on funding and resources being available. Ruth Olczyk would consult with Councillors individually to prioritise the programme." So there is no record of a decision. Well, perhaps the Freedom of Information Act can only work if there is any information. But what an absurd response for the leader of our County Council to have to give. Perhaps Cllr Kendal was being more honest in just saying the decision process had "not been formally recorded"?

An issue was raised by Dr Bernard Bedford, on 26th Nov 2010 to Cllr Mel Kendall about about the scheme being called a "trial". He asked how the results will be assessed, pointing out that measuring, "change compared with any recent cluster of animal accidents would be farcical, as randomness always regresses to the mean".

Cllr Kendal's reply on 25th January (two months later) almost admits in advance that the data will be inconclusive. So what they will resort to is proving that average speeds have fallen. Of course they will, especially in summer, when some of the traffic will be stationary at many of the nine pinch points.
That doesn't mean people will be concentrating more looking out for animals, but probably less. (This issue was also raised in a letter to me from safety professional Doug Patterson.) As Dr Bedford says in his e-mail to me "They shouldn't treat the public as very simple people."

Then there is the speed limit issue.

Our County Councillors and the HCC Highways have repeatedly insisted, including to the Parish Council and the Friends of Brockenhurst, that a reduced speed limit could not be justified on the Burley Road. This is well summarised by Cllr Kendal's letter to Mr Malcolm Graveling on Feb 7th, which states:

"30 miles per hour speed limits should only be introduced where drivers can see a reason for the limit, which is the rationale behind the importance placed on the presence of sufficient frontage development.  The absence of these is likely to mean there would be a high level of non-compliance with a lower limit."

The three top pictures to the left, show existing 30mph limits on approaches to Brockenhurst. On the A377, from both the north and south, no frontages are visible, and on the B3055 approach from the Lyminton Road, (centre) just one house is visible.

 

But on the left here, the Burley Road approach, where such a limit is said not to be possible, many frontages are visible, with three of them, and a red telephone box, close to the road. It looks like the start of the village, very much the "reason for the limit".

So I suspect the real reason for this stubborn resistance, is that to get a speed limit approved would have needed wider, and perhaps more circumspect, opinion to be involved. Calling it a trial enabled this expensive knee-jerk reaction. A speed limit would have clearly have been possible. And a trial? The posts are built to last about fifty years, and there is no budgeted provision for their possible removal.

At County level, there has been a total unwillingness to be open, or even respond to, questions. My letter to Cllr Thornber remains unanswered and the responses from Cllr Kendal are farcical. The FoI Act has had to be used twice. Wharever the merits or otherwise of the pinch points, is this what we expect of open and honest local government?

The Highways Authority.

Uniquely for Hampshire, this traffic calming was justified solely on the grounds of reduction of accidents involving animals. The basis for safety assessment should have been that it would achieve that purpose, but that no additional danger to human life or limb should arise. I have been unable to get a statement to this effect.

Look at the spelling on the photo to the left. These were only changed when members of the public pointed out the mistake.

Another mistake remains. The reflectors marking the kerbs at each pinch point were initially omitted, so had to be added later at extra cost. But then the offside ones were put in, and remain, the wrong way round. With mistakes as basic as these, we are still supposed to have confidence in an "independent" safety assessment of the scheme, carried out by the same organisation.

But all of this would have been more difficult if our more local bodies, although not having jurisdiction, had chosen to voice objections. So:

The New Forest and Brockenhurst.

The New Forest National Park Authority.

To the left - one of their Designated Areas of Special Character!

The NFNPA rigorously enforce their planning policies, but were almost mute on the pinch point issue. At face value these posts contravene five key policies always enforced in this area of the forest, being:

Core Strategy, item 2.20, on Infrastructure in the Countryside.
Views in the Weirs Character & Conservation Area, item 4.3.13.
General Development Criteria, policy DW-E1.
Areas of Special Character, policies DW-E1 & DW-E11.
Sites of Special Scientific Interest, policy DW-E37.

But, all these can be circumvented if the construction is 'within the highway boundary', even in these so well protected areas. But even so, progress with the scheme would have been more difficult if the NFPA had stated how ridiculous this situation was.

So, we have one expensive local organisation creating and imposing detailed planning regulations, and another spending a large amount paying no regard to them, whatever designated conservation, special character or scientific area is violated.

For all the correspondence click NFNPA.

 

The New Forest District Council.

Councillor Maureen Holding chose not to reply to my letter of 16th Sept 2010, which requested information about District Council involvement. So I trawled through the on-line minutes of many District Council meetings. I found nothing about the pinch points. Mrs Holding seems not to have raised objections to the pinch points, certainly not on the records I found, or in the meetings I have attended. To see my original request to her click elected

The Brockenhurst Parish Council.

Although not having jurisdiction, one might hope they would have an influence on impositions from Winchester, such as the pinch points and the narrowing of Brookley Road. Indeed they put in the Autumn Brock News that "this work was not instigated following pressure from the Parish Council. Council's preferred option is for an extension of the 30 mph limit along Burley Road".

But they have not further contested the issue with County Councillor Thornber, who assured a Parish Council meeting that, "my officers would never install something which would introduce a road hazard, and I think they are installed shallowly or designed to break off so to be safe".

But this is what happened in July. The car has struck the near-side post, bounced off it, and rolled over to come to rest at the other side of the road. The car was a complete write off, and the occupant lucky to need only minor hospital treatment.

And it soon happened again. The relatively new car was written off.

But then, reporting a later meeting, the Lymington Times said, "The leader of Hampshire County Council was forced into an embarrassing admission that its workers have not built controversial Brockenhurst pinch points how he had promised." and that "they were built deep into the road 'substantially' as a rigid mounting." and "they could cause vehicles substantial damage,".

But the statement seemed to concern only one councillor, and the minutes included: "It was noted that...greater safety has been afforded to...cycling families." This astonishes my cycling acquaintances, one of whom will no longer use that route because he finds it so stressful, even during the day, and at night frightening. And he is not the only one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe it should have been the cliche, "hard-working cycling families"?

It will certainly be hard work shepherding a family of cyclists through this succession of nine pinch points, each time potentially into oncoming traffic. Unless you break the law and take to the grass? And teach your children to.

But the law does include the words "or cause to be", so perhaps it is HCC Highways who are breaking it?

 

The dangers of the pinch points.

The local people who have taken the trouble to write letters to me expressing their concerns include: two local doctors, a chartered civil engineer, a chartered marine engineer specialising in safety assessment, an ex chairman of the Parish Council, a local solicitor, a pilot, people who have held senior positions in major businesses, and several local business people. There are also two members of local cycle clubs. To see these click comments.

The list below is far from covering all the points in these letters, but does shows the wide range of concerns people have.

The near miss, shown right, would have left someone frightened.
If you have to swerve to the side to avoid a vehicle forcing its way through, then, once your wheels are onto damp grass, your braking ability is very diminished.

In general: These are large and substantial unlit obstructions placed into an unlit curving and undulating roadway. The risks will be worse with low sun, or at night, in fog, or with ice.

Points before a hill brow: At night, even on dipped beams, a vehicle coming over the brow will dazzle an oncoming vehicle, just as it is approaching two of the pinch points.

The sheer number of points. It is reported to me that some drivers seem increasingly frustrated as they go though so many obstacles. The result is ever more aggression at each pinch point. That people react like this is an unfortunate fact of life, and dangerous if you are coming the other way.

Mist and fog: This area is generally damp and liable to mist and fog. The road changes elevation, and sometimes the fog hangs in the hollow, at other times at the higher points. This sort of patchy fog is always difficult in darkness.

Post solidity: These posts are massive, about 1 foot square in section, embedded in concrete, and absolutely unyielding. We are encouraged to use small economical vehicles. An impact at well below the speed limit would be extremely dangerous for the occupants of such cars. For a motorcycle, 20 mph could be fatal, hitting the rider chest-high.

Leisure cyclists: Many will have hired a cycle for the day. Will a child following a person in front of them understand that this could take them head-on into the path of an oncoming vehicle, where priority is resolved only by contention? Some of these points are on a slope, and child cyclists may be freewheeling downhill or struggling, head down, uphill.

Serious road cyclists: A quote from one: "What we need is other traffic at consistent speed and predictable path". This is exactly what is not going to happen at the pinch points. Motorists often misjudge the speed of these cyclists. See the two letters from serious cyclists in the comments section.

Dazzle from low sun: The east/west direction of the road means that at many times of the year it gives drivers problems with low sun at sunrise or sunset. With trees around, sometimes the pinch points will be in shadow as sun is in the driver's eyes. They may temporarily just not see a pinch point.

In summary: The list looks like a guide to why putting massive unlit objects in a twisty unlit roadway might be dangerous. Then there is the congestion, the extra carbon use and pollution from the stop-start motoring, the visual intrusion - and the £35,000 spent.

Ken's Bends should be removed before someone is killed or seriously injured.

On those lines, I received this e-mail from John Dunlop:
"If a human fatality did occur as a result of the pinch points, I imagine the Council would be sued. It seems to me it's like a time-bomb ticking that the Council would do well to defuse at their earliest opportunity. John."

Tick

Tock

On Oct 22nd 2011 the Lymington Times advised readers that a review of the pinch points was to be carried out. Mindful of warnings like the above, I wrote to Cllr Thornber and Stuart Jarvis. This put forward what I considered to be constructive suggestions about changes which could make the road safer and better achieve reduction in animal accidents.
This is the penultimate letter on the 'Elected page. The last one is an immediate response I had from another Burley Road resident. To see them click elected and scroll down.

To leave comments click here. For the comments received so far click comments

Allan Hendry

Acknowledgements. In addition the the named persons who have sent letters, I am also indebted to many others, some of whom wished to remain anonymous, for giving me huge amounts of information and help.

(An easy way to get to this site is to Google - Burley Road pinch points)