State of Congleton Road pavements

Maybe long-time residents can tell me - have the pavements on Congleton Road always been neglected like they are now?
My wife and I moved to the village in July, and finally wrote to Cheshire East, and Counc Frank Keegan, six weeks ago about the state of the pavements.
No reply from either of them, and no change in the pavements.
In July they still had last years’ thick build-up of leaves and nuts, now they’ve got this autumn’s fall on top.
You can’t avoid getting the mulch stuck under your shoes and walking it into the house.
The sections of pavement I’m talking about are the west side of the
A34 Congleton Road on and off from Welsh Row towards the village, and
the east side from Whitebarn Road into the village, where
overhanging shrubbery and trees and weeds were taking over the
pavement.
Maybe my wife and I are the only pedestrians, so nobody else cares…

John - you might be falling between 2 stools.  George Walton is the Councillor for Nether Alderley and you may find that most of the footpaths you are worried about are in his patch. Try e-mailing George and see what response you get - of course CEC is busy cutting back on almost every service it provides, so it may prove difficult for any Councillor to get something done.

Thanks for the advice Marc. Will email George Walton, but there’s just as much muck on the pavements on the village side of the Nether Alderley boundary sign.

Hi John,

I am the team leader for streetscape Cheshire East Council. Unfortunately, i have never recieved any complaints about the footpaths around the areas you are concerned. I did recieve one about the path leading to Sandy lane as the children of Nether Alderley are walking to the church for their Christmas Carol service and this was cleansed 2 weeks ago. I will conact the highways inspector regards the shrubberys and i will also visit the footpaths to see what we can do regards clearing the debris. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Wesley,
Please also can you make sure that I can push a wheelchair from Eaton Drive on Ryleys Lane to the Cemetery on Chelford Road, going past the Ryleys Farm on Feb 10th 2012 (Birthday).
If try it now you won’t be able to due to earthworks done some years ago that has covered the footpath that is still visable in places.
Three month to sort it should be fine !

Jon,

I have had an email response from Wesley Hutton telling that he is going down to look at that pavement to the cemetery today, and I will follow that up to see what the outcome is. I did bring it up with the Chief Exec and the head of highways when they visited the village in the summer, and action was promised, but it is my mistake in letting it fall off my radar.

Jon, Frank and Wesley,
I was always under the assumption that when the bridge was finished the pavements around it would have been addressed and put right. It was a great opportunity to do the pavement to the cemetary and hopefully now that will be done.Having walked there recently it is hazardous.
Now, all we need is the old headstone area tidying up. We are blessed to have a lovely cemetry in the countryside and it should be very important to all councillors.

Hi John,

Hopefully you can see a big change on the footpaths from just beyond Welsh Row. We have approx 500 yards from the Village to finish off tommorrow and Church lane has also been cleared for the Children to walk to church on the 10th. There will be another team doing Ryles lane first thing tommorrow morning and what they can not finish i will try and finish myself in the afternoon. As for surface quality, this is down the the Highways department and not Cheshire East Council, i will review them after the debris has been cleared and meet with the area Highways inspector to see if he can rectify the situation. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

I am so glad that the path to the cemetary is being sorted out. It has been almost non-existent on the bit of path that is adjacent to Chorley Hall Lane. I have written to Macclesfield Borough Council on numerous occasions in the past but the path is still a mess.  Hopefully, the path will soon be sorted out. The hedge, and particularly the growth at the bottom of the hedge, need cutting back. Years ago, there used to be harebells growing along by the pavement near the cemetary.

Whilst I applaud Wesley for the work he has done, I am totally dumbfounded by his remark ” As for surface quality, this is down the the Highways department and not Cheshire East Council, ”  Since we now have only one Council, all departments are those of Cheshire East Council.  Not only would it appear that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, the left hand does not know that the right hand is joined to the same body !  Wesley needs to talk to his close colleagues in the CEC Highways Dept and ask them to deal with the surface issue.

Hi Marc,

There is only one council but there are different departments of the council. Local schools and hospitals are councils but this does not mean that we all know what each other is doing. Each department has its own responsibilities. Unfortunately, we can not force another department to do work, we can only ask. This is the reason i use AlderleyEdge.com, as people put their complaints on the forums and say that they have e-mailed Cheshire East a number of times, if any complaint is put into C.E.C. about grass cutting, street cleansing, public bins or hedges then they are supposed to come to me but they do sometimes end up lost in cyber space somewhere as again i have not recieved the comlaint that Diana sent in. Like i said in my previous remark i will check the pavements and get the Highways inspector to hopefully sort the surface out.

Wesley ,
There seems to be a bigger issue here. No matter who puts in a request to CE Highways the official policy seems to be to completely ignore the request. Ratepayers like me are given a number and it is never heard of again - no one gets back to you - no one does anything. You escalate it by going to your councillor and then if you are lucky things happen. Frankly, it is not good enough. If the council has a good reason for not doing something they should tell the requester and discuss it with them. Alderleyedge.com should NOT be the forum for escalating complaints. The council should have its own complaints process and escalation procedures. If you think some of the forums on this site encourage balanced, reasoned opinions then you will reap what you sow and good luck to you. Any normal private organisation has simple, defined and monitored business procedures for dealing with the public. It appears CE Highways seem to be in constant firefighting mode dealing only with escalated requests from councillors which must be very demoralizing for them. There seems to be a failure in management. If this site is now part of the process please take this as an official complaint and speak to the head of Highways about it and ask him to publish his business procedures for dealing with, monitoring and communicating with the ratepayers requests indicating the targets agreed with his staff for completing the various tasks and the escalation procedures for any complaints. You will see the ignored requests discussed in this forum and Frank Keegan will be able to furnish you with my other past requests and my other complaints that have all been ignored. .....If only I could ignore my rates!

Wesley, If you read my comments again on the path to the cemetary, I mentioned that I wrote to the Council a number of years ago (my parents have been dead nearly ten years) and still I am waiting for the path to be properly cleared, in particular adjacent to Chorley Hall Lane.  I walked along there this morning and, as mentioned, the hedge and undergrowth need cutting back.  No way could one take a wheelchair along there.

Contact Rod Menlove is the man with the Highways and (just about everything else) portfolio.  He will speak directly to people (unlike Mr Fitzgerald) he is a little scratchy and defensive though.  Perhaps if they stopped sacking cabinet members it might free up his workload.  Good luck dealing with the Highways department though as you will enter a “Kafkaesque” nightmare.  I did have one lady tell me (at least it was direct honesty) that there is very little money available for things of this ilk. I had also asked why the Highways cannot cut back foliage so visitors can actually read signposts buried in the jungle on our roads.  I also drew her attention to the fact that the lights are on 24 hours a day on Macclesfield road as they are now merging with the trees. These things are just not a priority any more. just a thought, if I received an official letter from the Counci/Highways saying our trees or hedges were overgrown and interfering with street furniture I would cut them back.  There are a lot of very wealthy people on Macclesfield Road who could easily afford a chainsaw or at the very least pruning shears, and as they come out of their drives they must be able to see what the overgrowth does. (And it is not illegal to prune trees in a conservation area.)

Hi Wesley,
Thanks for the response. It’s a good start - keep it up!
Regards