Sir, – There have been concerns over a number of years regarding the A170 road at Sutton Bank and its use by heavy goods vehicles.

This view has been underpinned by North Yorkshire Police, the Freight Transport Association (FTA) and North Yorkshire County Council, who published a document in 2007 including the following:

“The bank has three sections of steep 1:4 (25 per cent) inclines along its length. Just over half way up is a left hand hairpin bend. Near the top there is a final short steep section before the main road bends sharply right”.

“On average, two goods vehicles per day experience up to four-hour delays ascending the bank. On average, over 120 goods vehicles per year fail to make the ascent and require police assistance to proceed”.

In 2004 , the county council undertook a review of Sutton Bank which involved creating a freight quality partnership involving the council, the FTA, the Road Haulage Association and the police. A study was carried out by Faber Maunsell consulting engineers on behalf of the partnership which included trials on 20 September 2004 using lorries on different road surfaces to evaluate their effectiveness in ascending the bank.

A number of recommendations were made to reduce the number of blockages by HGVs, but none of these have been implemented.

If the police are informed that a vehicle has got stuck, they will give assistance. Depending on the size of the vehicle, they are either turned around in the emergency lay-by or use a junction located some 1.8 miles from Sutton Bank. However, it is more often the case that the police are not informed. Therefore, these vehicles are frequently reversing the 1.8 miles unassisted, creating a major hazard to other road users. Also, there have been several HGVs jack-knifing and incidents where loads have been shed.

For nearly two years, local people have been logging details of blockages and this has been fed into a document produced by Sutton under Whitestonecliffe Parish Council and sent to the Department of Transport last month.

The parish council is representing a community which has major concerns about the safety of road users on Sutton Bank, damage to property by HGVs attempting to turn around in private driveways and the waste of taxpayers’ money through continual call-outs of the police to assist stranded lorries.

Ignoring the problem is no longer acceptable. Action is now required.

No response has been received from the Department of Transport, but if you have first-hand experience of blockages on Sutton Bank then please consider signing the on-line petition at Petitions24.com Sutton Bank.

Councillor JOHN SHARP

Sutton under Whitestonecliffe Parish Council.