A COUNTY councillor is calling on utilities contractors to ‘get real’ and think about the needs of rural communities before requesting lengthy road closures.

North Yorkshire County Councillor John Blackie took up the cause following complaints from Dales businesses and residents adversely affected by road closures.

Countryside communities are particularly vulnerable as the nature of the landscape often means that diversions add many miles onto residents’ journeys.

Cllr Blackie, who has written to the council’s Richmondshire Area Committee on the matter, gave an example of a recent road closure between Thwaite and Angram in Upper Swaledale to allow superfast broadband work.

The work needed a five-day daytime road closure and the diversion was 35-miles each way through some of the most remote landscape in the region.

One resident was given special dispensation to pass through the road closure to attend daily radiotherapy sessions at James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough – a 65-mile journey which was turned into a 200-mile trip due to the diversion.

The adverse impact of such diversions to rural residents has led to Cllr Blackie voicing concerns that the council’s highways department is not being robust enough in curtailing the amount of time contractors can request a road to be closed He recently held a series of recent meetings with highways officers, companies and sub-contractors which did lead to substantial reductions in the length of road closures.

These included a 28-day request from North Yorkshire Water in Upper Swaledale being reduced to no days of road closure, and just three days of work under traffic lights, and a six-week closure between Gunnerside and Muker requested by BT Openreach being cut to three weeks, with the actual work completed in less time.

Cllr Blackie said: “I recognise that staff at the NYCC Richmondshire Highways office have been very helpful at these meetings in securing my objectives of only allowing the absolute minimum of time a road will be closed, and the work being undertaken needs to be done - like installing superfast broadband - and we are grateful for it being done.

“Inevitably this may mean a road closure but surely given the unique difficulties of arranging road diversions in the Upper Dales, we must be harder in our approach and ask the statutory undertakers to ‘get real’.”

Cllr Blackie also wants more to be done to improve diversion signage and to ensure signs and lights are removed as soon as the work is complete.