All talk and no action on A38

As another election approaches, voters in South East Cornwall are asking why our Conservative MP has failed to deliver on the promises made at four previous elections to provide safety improvements on the deadly A38.

As a long-standing member of the SAFE38 Campaign Group, I know that the A38 from Saltash to Bodmin is the most dangerous strategic A-road in England, with a “one star” safety rating. Since 2010 there have been more than twenty fatalities, over 100 life-changing injuries and too many minor crashes to count. Of course driver error often plays a part, but the layout of this road means that one driver’s mistake often becomes an innocent driver’s tragedy. 

Our MP has a long-track record of calling for “something to be done”, but she has repeatedly failed to ask the right questions to the right people at the right time.

After the 2017 General Election, I pointed out to Ms Murray that Theresa May’s lack of a Parliamentary majority put her and her Cornish colleagues in an incredibly strong position: The Government desperately needed every last vote in order to get its business through Parliament, so any Conservative MP who was prepared to play “hardball” would be able to get funding for local projects. During this period, St Austell’s MP secured funding for a link road to the A30, and West Cornwall MPs secured funding for the Carland to Chiverton upgrade, both of which should be complete within the next year. But when I suggested to Ms Murray that she should do likewise for South East Cornwall, she told me she didn’t want to “blackmail” the Government.

In 2020 it seemed that progress might finally be made when the Government announced that the A38 from Carkeel to Trerulefoot would be included in the £25 billion “Road Investment Strategy”. But it soon became clear that this was just a “pipeline project”, i.e. only the first phase of design was funded, not the actual delivery of any improvements. In 2020, when our MP asked Boris Johnson why safety measures at the Menheniot junction hadn’t been included in the package, the PM simply said he “hoped” that Highways England would “get on with the Menheniot junction as fast as possible”.

When the “route safety package” was finished, Menheniot didn’t even get a mention. The recommendation for Carkeel to Trerulefoot was a series of minor measures such as altered speed limits, average speed cameras and realignment of one bend. But we were told that no more funding was available until at least 2030 because the Government has committed £9 billion to a huge new motorway across the Thames from Essex to Kent!

So, fourteen years after our current MP was elected, there is still no funding in place for any safety measures on the A38. South East Cornwall deserves an MP who knows how to get things done. Our lives depend on it…