Charlotte from School Green Road, Freshwater has been in touch, desperate to understand why Island Roads choose to carry out overnight resurfacing works in built-up residential areas.
Last night her children were unable to sleep in their room – even with the window closed – and had to sleep on a makeshift bed of sofa cushions on the floor in their parent’s bedroom.
“Their beds were shaking”
Charlotte said,
“We had multiple heavy machinery working directly outside our home (planned for four nights) – all through the night until 4am.
“There are trucks, a tarmac remover, drills, lights and horns and alarms going.
“Our children have had to leave their room, as even with the window closed and relaxation music on full volume, they are both distressed. When the tarmac remover passed their room their beds were shaking.”
“No respect for basic rights”
She argues that no respect has been afforded to the basic rights of residents, saying,
“That this level of volume is allowed to go on in a highly built up residential area during these hours is unbelievable and I highly doubt the owners of Island Roads would be allowing this outside their own homes.
“Even our basic rights are now given no respect or consideration.”
Crew members unable to reach lifeboat
Charlotte says her partner, who works for the lifeboat, has fellow crew members who were delayed on a call out. She explained,
“My partner works on the lifeboat and although he was able to attend, many crew members were delayed attending a call out this evening due to the main road in our village being closed completely.”
Island Roads respond
OnTheWight has asked the Isle of Wight council a series of questions relating to the policy of overnight roadworks in built up residential areas. They passed the questions onto Island Roads, who responded:
“The resurfacing works in School Green Road were scheduled as night time works as this is a busy route for local traffic during daytime hours and there are therefore restrictions placed on the hours during which work can be carried out on this road in order to minimise disruption to local road users.
“As with all our road improvement schemes that we have carried out over the last six years, local residents received a letter in advance of the works explaining the hours of work and any restrictions for access and were asked to contact us if they had any specific access requirements. We try to do all we can in the event of such notifications to accommodate these requests, where it is possible to do so, and we work closely with the emergency services to ensure access and when we are alerted to on-call responders living in the vicinity of the works.
“The resurfacing work does require the use of heavy machinery, as we explained in the letter, and we appreciate that this can be noisy, but we cannot complete our work without the use of these vehicles. The work is scheduled for a further three nights and will therefore be completed in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“We hope that the short-term disruption will be offset by the lasting improvements that will be made to this road.”
Article edits
Reference to lifeboat boat crew being unable to attend shout (rather than just being delayed) corrected from original info given by resident.
Response from Island Roads added
