Weldon residents discuss road safety concerns with Corby MP, Tom Pursglove

Residents in Weldon, along with the MP for Corby, Tom Pursglove, and local councillors, gathered on Friday to discuss road safety issues within the village.

The meeting was held on Friday, July 21, at Weldon Village Hall.

It was organised by Weldon resident Kevin Collins who, along with many other residents, has been concerned at the number of accidents there have been in Oundle Road in recent years.

The narrow street is currently a dangerous area for pedestrians, particularly parents with pushchairs and prams.

Kevin said: “You see people with double-buggies with children walking through and I look away because it scares me.

“I think it’s purely the volume of traffic and all the different scenarios that are building up here to create a perfect storm of safety.

“I think the fact that we’ve only had three accidents in the last two years is probably more luck than judgement.

“It’s the accidents that we’re trying to avoid and the safety of the children going to school is the real driver for the village.”

The meeting gave residents an opportunity to raise and discuss safety concerns associated with Oundle Road and allowed those who live on the road to share their personal experiences.

Residents were also able to question their MP in person on what he would do to help them.

Tom Pursglove, Member of Parliament for Corby, said: “There are some really understandable concerns here in Weldon about the safety of the roads that are in the centre of the village, with a number of concerns about the safety of particularly children and young people but also issues around prams and pushchairs being able to get down what are very narrow paths with roads where the traffic moves very very quickly.

“It’s been really useful to get together with everybody today. It’s clearly a massive issue that people in the village are worried about and I will work with them and with the parish council to try and help identify some solutions.”

There are concerns that if nothing is done about this issue, someone could die.

Tom Pursglove MP said: “It should never ever get to the stage where we have a fatality and you only have to look at the pictures and the videos that I’ve seen tonight to see the risk that some people are taking by walking along those roads but people ultimately need to be able to get to where they need to get to.

“My message to North Northamptonshire Council is to come here, to have these conversations with residents, to have those conversations with the parish council, to see what we can do as quickly as possible as a community to try and improve this.

“I’ll be taking away the action that I agreed to, the key one being that we’re going to try and get everybody here to walk these streets, to have those discussions but also then to hopefully come up with some concrete actions about how we move this on because people want to see action.”