By Isle of Wight Observer
The new councillor for Ventnor & St Lawrence, Ed Blake, has spoken of his fear of the impact of closing another main route into the town.
Cllr Blake, who won his seat just before Christmas, has been told that Southern Water want to close a section of Newport Road before the end of the month to ongoing work to a collapsed drain. The road has a collapsing surface, caused by a geological feature known as a graben, caused when a block of land drops downwards.
Cllr Blake said that, while Leeson Road remains closed because of a major landslip, the closure of Newport Road would leave only one route into Ventnor, the Whitwell Road. When the road was closed previously, before Leeson Road was closed, businesses and residents faced enormous problems, with a pallet delivery which usually takes a day taking a week, and a resident who worked in the prison taking four and half hours to get to work. He said: “If this was happening in Newport, hell and high water would be moved. But it is Ventnor and no form of help is coming to our town. There has been a consistent failure to manage traffic routes into Ventnor.”
The IW Observer approached Island Roads for a comment.
