Letter: Southwater roundabout needs repairing

However it already needs repairing as it was built to a similar design to the one where you go into Sainsbury’s in Horsham, ie a circle of bricks surrounding an inner circle with a tarmac circle on the outside.

After a lot of repairs to the bricks these were eventually replaced with Tarmac. The roundabout in Southwater has been built with a very narrow circle of Tarmac that any large lorry will clip the brick of the brick circle and cause it to break up.

I watched a ten tonne rigid lorry on January 3 which did exactly that, the No 23 bus came round and had to drop his speed to about 5mph to get round without touching the bricks.

Any articulated lorry will have no chance.

It appears to me that this needs rectifying by the contractors before they leave the site and not leave it as an ongoing maintenance problem for the WSCC Highways Department.

Jeremy Senneck

Cripplegate Lane, Southwater

Editor’s note: Mr Senneck copied his letter to a number of councillors. Nigel Jupp, West Sussex county councillor for Southwater and Nuthurst, subsequently responded:

Dear Mr Senneck

Thank you for your email about the unsatisfactory construction of this roundabout.

This matter has been drawn to the attention of WSCC Highways, Southwater PC and Miller/Wates and is the subject of copious correspondence and on site meetings between SPC, WSCC and Miller/Wates.

Regards, Nigel Jupp