Chitterne Parish Council

Thank you to everyone who came to the traffic meeting on Friday. More than 80 villagers were in the Village Hall, and that made a real difference. It demonstrated more powerfully than any letter or set of statistics could that traffic is a serious concern across our community. The representatives of the organisations involved could see for themselves that this is not a complaint from a few individuals: Chitterne expects the problem to be addressed.

The meeting also helped clarify the scale of the challenge. We have to accept that Traffic through Chitterne is not going to reduce. It is likely to increase. The A303 will remain under pressure and, with no strategic solution to Stonehenge likely for many years, traffic will continue to spill onto the B390 and surrounding roads. We therefore need to plan for a long-term problem rather than wait for it to disappear.

Our objective cannot be to stop people travelling through Chitterne. The B390 is a public road and will continue to carry traffic. What we want is for that traffic to pass through our community safely and with reasonable consideration for the people who live here. If sensible measures mean that a journey takes a minute longer because vehicles travel through the village at an appropriate speed, that seems a reasonable balance between the interests of those passing through and those who live alongside the road.

A great many suggestions were made at the meeting - covering speed limits and cameras, signage, HGVs, road design, pedestrian safety, pavements, horses, satnav routing, the C22. All of them matter and we will capture them. But we should not jump immediately to a single preferred solution. We need to understand what would work, what the consequences would be and what should have priority.

We will therefore take the work forward on two fronts:

First, we will press for outside action and resources. Wiltshire Council, National Highways, Wiltshire Police and the Road Safety Partnership all have different responsibilities and all face resource pressures. But simply telling rural communities that there is no money cannot be the end of the matter. Very substantial sums were contemplated for resolving the A303 at Stonehenge. The resources required to make life more manageable in Chitterne - and in other rural communities suffering the result of congestion on the strategic network - are tiny by comparison. If there is to be no strategic solution for many years, we believe there is a strong case for resources to help us. We will pursue that case.

Second, we will develop our own Chitterne Traffic Action Plan. We will capture the individual problems and ideas raised by residents, investigate the possible solutions and put them into a sensible order of priority. Some may be relatively simple; others may require technology, changes to the road or significant outside funding. The purpose of the plan will be to ensure that, as resources and opportunities become available, we know where they can make the greatest difference.  And rest assured we will not take ‘no’ for an answer!

We are also setting ourselves a timetable. We do not want Friday's meeting simply to become another turn of the bureaucratic wheel. By the end of March 2027 we intend to have a prioritised Chitterne Traffic Action Plan which is recognized by the authorities, clear commitments from the organisations responsible for our roads and road safety, and to see the first practical measures either happening on the ground or firmly programmed. Some of the larger changes will inevitably take longer, but within six months the village should be able to see that this process is producing results.

We will report back regularly on progress. If, by the end of March, the necessary action and resources are not forthcoming, we will need to consider how we escalate the case.

Friday's meeting was therefore an important turning point. We have demonstrated the problem; we now need those with the authority and resources to help us address it. At the same time, we need to do our own homework so that we can put forward practical, prioritised proposals rather than simply a list of complaints.

There will be no quick or single solution, and if we stop pressing, very little is likely to happen. But Friday demonstrated that the village is strongly behind this effort. The Parish Council will now use that mandate to maintain the pressure, find the resources and turn the many good ideas raised at the meeting into a practical programme for making traffic through Chitterne more manageable.