In respect of the ongoing problems on King Lane and Kings Road that a lot of residents have contacted me above I have received a number of responses and updates, these are set out below for you.
- From Booths, the contractors who are working for the Golf Club
“I just wanted to contact you with regards to the recent issues at our Headingley Golf Club scheme on King Lane. We acknowledge everyone’s concerns and just wanted to explain what has been happening, why and what we are doing to improve the situation.
During the last week there have been HGV’s queuing to get into the site along King Lane, HGV’s waiting on King Lane after leaving the site and mud / debris being deposited. These issues have resulted from a combination of factors outside of our control.
As you are aware the weather has been predominantly wet since June, so site conditions are not favourable. The rain over the last few weeks has been especially heavy, making conditions worse. I’m sure you will agree that most local residents would like to see this scheme completed as soon as possible. A downturn in the economy and lack of soil availability this year has delayed the completion by several months. You may have noted that the site was extremely quiet throughout the summer months. Soil availability has now improved, and we have chosen to continue and battle with conditions to ensure the scheme is completed in a timely manner. The other option is to close the site during these periods, but this would only result in further delays.
Given these conditions, although our wheel wash and road sweeper are fully operational most of the time, there have been isolated occasions where there have been faults or breakdowns resulting in short periods of mud / debris on the road.
In addition to this, the time it takes for a HGV to deliver material is much longer than what it would be if the site was dry. This has resulted in HGV’s temporarily queuing out of the gate, but this is only on sporadic occasions and is not a constant. To compound this issue, another local site, that we do not operate but provide material to (Moor Allerton Golf Club), closed on Friday and yesterday, automatically sending all HGV’s to Headingley Golf Club without informing us. If we had been informed, we would have prevented it from happening. A set of temporary traffic lights also appeared on King Lane on Friday, a few hundred meters from our entrance, which resulted in even more queues along King Lane as HGV’s were leaving.
The above issues have given the impression that we are much busier than usual and have an excessive number of deliveries, but in reality, this isn’t the case. The planning application for the scheme was based on up to 60 soil deliveries per day and this was accepted by Leeds Council. I have reviewed our average daily load numbers over the last month and can confirm that last week we were at 60 per day on a couple of days, but the previous weeks we were only averaging 30 per day. The rest of the year we have been well below this.
Resolutions / Improvements
- Deploy an additional operations manager at the site to monitor conditions and any highways challenges.
- Ensure we keep below the maximum deliveries of 60 per day and ensure they are spread as evenly as possible throughout the day.
- We have spoken with the site operators at Moor Allerton Golf Club, and we can assure you that they will not send any HGV’s to Headingley GC to us unannounced again.
- A second bulldozer was delivered to site yesterday. This will work with the current bulldozer to speed up the HGV turnaround time on site. This will certainly reduce the need for HGVs to que on the highway.
- The temporary traffic lights have now gone. We understand some resurfacing works were taking place on Friday only so there will be no HGV’s stopping on King Lane as they leave.
- Ensure the wheel wash and road sweeper are inspected every morning and maintained regularly to prevent issues and breakdowns.
- Any time there is a breakdown or issue with the wheel wash or road sweeper we do everything in our power to rectify the situation as soon as possible. We have engineers on standby to fix / repair the wheel wash and similar the road sweeper. We also have several local road sweeping companies on standby, which can provide road sweeper cover whilst our is fixed.
I hope this gives you some confidence and reassurance that the events of last week have been taken very seriously and resolving them has been a priority. “
- From Headingley Golf Club
“I can imagine you are receiving many calls etc at the moment about our King Lane site.
Obviously we’re sorry about this and we’re doing everything we can at the moment to get Booth’s to bring the situation back under control. They have told us that they will be in contact with you.
In amongst the comms we are receiving are many questions asking us when the infill phase will end. At the moment we are looking like sometime in spring 24.”
- From Leeds City Council Highways in respect of the state of the highway (potholes)
“We have attended the location a number of times this week both outside and during working hours, including yesterday evening to make the location safe. Due to the weather and build up of surface and standing water, the emergency repairs we have carried out are failing. We currently have a team on their way now to try to eradicate the standing water and carry out further emergency repairs, with the hope that the repair will have more longevity when laid in dryer conditions.
We are aware of the issues raised. Unfortunately we are currently fighting a losing battle in these locations, we are currently attending regularly to make sure the area is made safe. However with the current weather conditions and the types of vehicles making the turn here, the temporary repairs are not holding as they should. We are currently looking at carrying out some further, more substantive urgent repairs in these locations, whilst also carrying out emergency repairs.
We will continue to monitor this site, until a more substantive repair can be carried out.”
I, and my colleagues in Alwoodley Ward have sent a number of emails to the Chief Highways Officer and also to Planning raising serious concerns about these problems. We have been badly let down in this area, both by Planning Department who didn’t set out clear and legally enforceable conditions when the application was approved and by the Highways Department, both in terms of them not understanding the area and the width and types of road we have and permitting HGVs to use them. They also did not request funding from either Booths who are the company doing the work, nor from the Golf course or other golf courses who have been carrying out similar works, to repair the highway.
