Call for permanent repairs on 'death trap' road

Alan Whitney said the subsiding roadway needed a major overhaul to make it safe

Residents living near a notorious Fenland road beside a waterway that regularly buckles and is an accident blackspot said they hoped to see permanent improvements to the road surface.

Forty Foot Bank connects Ramsey Forty Foot village to Doddington and Chatteris, and it has seen a number of fatal crashes over the years.

Recently the road has begun to subside again, with large cracks appearing along the carriageways.

One resident told the BBC the road "seems to be getting worse on a weekly basis". Cambridgeshire County Council said it was "doing everything we can" to keep roads built over peat soils safe, with repairs due to start in January.

Local residents said two sections of the road had been cordoned off with temporary traffic lights, but other open sections were just as bad

Alan Whitney, 78, lives in nearby Benwick and said the road was a "death trap".

"The road seems to be getting worse on a weekly basis. It is subsiding both sides, cracking up, has ridges in the tarmac and is so dangerous," he said.

He added that he often saw vehicles having to zigzag to avoid large cracks, and worried a lorry could eventually topple over into the drain.

"People have died here, unfortunately, on a regular basis. Something has to be done," he added.

Teresa Coplestone, 63, lives in Ramsey Forty Foot and said the road seemed to be getting worse in the last year or so.

"It has caused so many near-misses; vehicle wing mirrors are often smashed as cars, vans and lorries dodge cracks and subsidence along the road," she said.

Ms Coplestone also said vehicles went along the road mimicking a rollercoaster, as they veered left and right to miss crevices and craters.

"It is an extremely busy road too, with lots of farm machinery and huge lorries up and down it," she said.

Teresa Coplestone said the road resembled a patchwork quilt, as it had received so many temporary repairs

Brian Wadey, 40, said local drinkers in his pub referred to the Forty Foot as the "death road".

The BBC and other local media outlets have run stories showing more than a dozen people have died on the road in the past 20 years. CrashMap, which uses Department for Transport data, lists many more accidents.

On Friday, four separate crashes occurred on the road during the same morning.

Mr Wadey said: "I have even lost customers in the drain, it is so sad and such a shame.

"The road is a shambles and needs improving.

"A lot of residents are happier to go on diversions, longer routes, that take longer times, but at least they avoid that road."

Brian Wadey is the landlord of the local pub in Ramsey Forty Foot and said the state of the road was a hot topic at the bar

Liberal Democrat-run Cambridgeshire County Council said due to recent subsidence, one lane on Forty Foot Bank was closed, with temporary traffic lights in two locations.

It said a "significant amount of reconstruction and resurfacing" was required, with work starting in January.

"Forty Foot Bank, along with many other roads in the county, is built over peat soils. This means the road surface can become significantly uneven with seasonal and weather changes, within a relatively short period of time," a spokesperson said.

"We are doing everything we can locally to maintain and keep soil affected roads safe, but addressing this challenge properly requires national support and government funding for long-term solutions. This is because it costs four times as much to repair a soil affected road to the same standard as a non-soil affected road.

"We have already secured £1.5m of external funding which we are using to undertake a trial next summer to investigate new and innovative ways to repair these roads, and an extra £5m of capital funding has been ring-fenced since 2023 to repair and reconstruct soil affected roads."

The Department for Transport said: "Local authorities are responsible for managing their roads.

"Over the past year alone, we invested an extra £500m – enough funding to fill the equivalent of seven million potholes – to help local authorities maintain their local road networks."