Community leaders in Peasedown St John are calling on Bath and North East Somerset Council to do more to respond to damage and scattered debris after large storms hit the area.
Village councillors Karen Walker and Sarah Bevan want the local authority to set up disaster response teams that can quickly respond to problems caused by strong winds, torrential rain and other unwelcome weather occurrences.
Cllr Karen Walker (Independent, Peasedown) said: “After recent storms, residents contacted me to raise concerns about overturned trees, broken road signs and debris in the road.
“Parts of our communities, particularly our well used roads, can be dangerous to use when storm damage is left lying around.
“Here in Peasedown St John, a large tree trunk was uprooted due to excessive wind speeds – causing a fright for local residents and a danger to road users and pedestrians.”
Karen and Sarah want to ensure that B&NES Council can react quickly when ‘freak’ accidents like this happen, in the interest of community safety.
Cllr Karen Walker has written to Cllr Martin Veal, Cabinet Member for Communities, to ask for additional response resources to be appointed and deployed.
Cllr Sarah Bevan (Independent, Peasedown) added: “Cllr Walker and I met with council cleansing officers last week to clarify this and Peasedown’s regular cleansing schedule.
“We’ve asked them to respond to individual residents’ clean up requests, rather than only doing certain roads with no flexibility to divert the teams on a weekly, street by street basis.”
