OUR County town is being swamped with new housing developments but without adequate new highways infrastructure.

The article in last week’s County Gazette ('Tackling fast drivers') is a great cause for concern.

A new school is built facing onto a road which is already known to have safety issues as it features regularly in the “speed cameras” programme.

Given that SCC Highways, having surveyed Nerrols Drive four months after the school had opened only to “agree that steps are needed", surely indicates that they had not been proactive as consultees of the planning application.

Such steps should have been part and parcel of SCC Highways' proactive planning and not reactive!

Dependent on what Highways decide to do, this could cause more disruption albeit it “ temporary” when it could have all been done originally in one go, and possibly have cost less in the long run!

Road users of Corkscrew Lane, Staplegrove Road and Kingston Road (whether cyclists, pedestrians or drivers) could find themselves facing severe traffic problems with the North Taunton development (Staplegrove) as a result of lack of proactive highways planning. Just like Nerrols Drive, these three roads are used by many more than local residents.

Residents of Staplegrove Action Group (RoSAG) and Staplegrove Parish Council have been very keen to try to mitigate the effects of a potential 3,200 additional cars from the new Staplegrove development onto these three roads.

Therefore, Staplegrove Parish Council has a petition which can be found on their website www.staplegroveparish.gov.uk.

If you use any of these routes currently you may want to support this petition to try to get improved road infrastructure to that which is currently proposed.

JACKIE CALCROFT AND CHRIS RIX

RoSAG