SOMERSET residents have urged councillors to reconsider the indefinite closure of a rat run near Yeovil, claiming its risk assessment was flawed.

Chinnock Hollow, which runs from the A30 High Street in East Chinnock through the neighbouring village of Odcombe, has been closed since February 21, 2021 following “significant landslide” involving 20 tonnes of rock and sand, along with a large tree.

Following extensive studies, Somerset Council announced in June that it “could not justify” spending around £2.7 million on reopening the road – meaning it will remain closed until further funding becomes available.

West Coker Parish Council has now called on this decision to be challenged, arguing the risk of harm to motorists and pedestrians has been greatly exaggerated.

This comes after much of the debris on the road was mysteriously cleared by an unknown person or persons, who also removed the ‘road closed’ signs.

Chris Barker, who sits on West Coker Parish Council, raised the issue at a full council meeting held in Bridgwater on July 26, stating the council had “not been given a sound basis to make a decision” on the road’s future.

He elaborated: “Your consultants have identified that rocks and trees could fall into the Hollow and cause fatality or major damage to property.

“They say the likelihood of such a fall is 50 to 70 per cent – but there’s not time-frame for that.

“The probability of me dying is 100 per cent, but the probability of me dying in the next year is, I hope, nearer five per cent. If you have a number without a time-scale, you can’t use it.

“Your report estimates 1,200 vehicles used the road daily when it was opened – that’s one every 72 seconds.

“If you’re persuaded that a tree is going to fall every 20 years, that’s the probability of one fatality every 500 years.”

The A30 through West Coker is currently closed as the council carries out resurfacing and repairs to the existing traffic signals – with motorists being diverted along the A356 from Crewkerne up to the A303.

Somerset County Gazette: The report estimated it could cost up to £2.7 million to make the road safe again.The report estimated it could cost up to £2.7 million to make the road safe again. (Image: Somerset Council)

Mr Barker continued: “As we speak, 2,400 vehicles a day are taking the long way around, travelling at least an extra two miles – that’s 130,000 extra litres of petrol and diesel a year, and more than 300 tonnes of CO2 we could do without.

“You might not like my numbers – but you don’t have others. A risk assessment without numbers is really just a hunch.”

WSP, which produced the Chinnock Hollow report, was recently awarded an eight-year contract to deliver a range of consultancy services to the council on a ‘sole supplier’ basis.

Councillor Mike Rigby, portfolio holder for transport and digital, said he trusted WSP as a consultancy firm and stood by the conclusions of its final report.

He told the full council: “The risk of slope instability at Chinnock Hollow was assessed based on site observations make during inspections and a desk-based review of the site’s geology, using geological maps, other resources from the British Geological Survey and other publicly available resources.

“This is an industry standard approach in the assessment of rock slopes, and once which WSP has adopted on a considerable number of other projects, including those for local authorities and National Highways.

“This isn’t a widely improbable risk: we had, not a million miles from here at the Beaminster tunnel a couple of years ago, an incident where a collapse did occur and two people were sadly killed.”

The council stated on Tuesday (August 1) that it had reinstated the ‘road closed’ signs at either end of Chinnock Hollow and confirmed the road would be “closed for the foreseeable future on safety grounds”.

A spokesman said: “The debris was deliberately left on the road to deter people from trying to use an unsafe route.

“Now it has been moved, we will have to look at spending public money securing the site so it cannot be used – money that could be better spent elsewhere.

“The road is closed because a report – an independent report – found it was not safe to open and public safety has to come first. This is a real risk, not a theoretical one.”