Railport impact on A5 sparks alarm for North Warwickshire councillors

Congestion concerns along the A5 through north Warwickshire has led to councillors speaking out over a proposed new rail freight depot over the border in Leicestershire.

The development on land south of Elmesthorpe between the Leicester to Hinckley railway and the M69 would involve a new link road being built to service up to 850,000 sqm of warehousing. A railport capable of accommodating up to 16 trains a day of up to 775 metres would also be constructed alongside a lorry park and HGV filling station. Access would be from junction 2 of the motorway.

Members of North Warwickshire Borough Council’s planning board were asked to comment on the application - lodged by Tritax Symmetry (Hinckley) Ltd - at their meeting on Monday with the final decision resting with the Secretary of State.

Cllr Neil Dirveiks (Lab, Atherstone Central) raised the matter of an already busy road system, questioning whether it would be able to cope with extra traffic.

He said: “We are already at breaking point on the A5 and we need to make every representation that we can to councils around the area, the county council, Highway England and central government to get the A5 upgraded.

“It isn’t good enough, it’s grinding to a halt regularly and it will only get worse particularly when we see these developments.

“I can see the need for a development like this but there is no development if nothing can move around here and that seems too often forgotten.”

His concerns were echoed by committee chairman Cllr Mark Simpson (Con, Curdworth) who said: “I love the idea that these things are rail-served but there are just as many lorries taking things to and from the railway so it is half rail-served.

“There are a huge range of potential impacts on our area. The West Midlands Strategic Employment Site Study is turning out to be a real trojan horse for North Warwickshire and the more we can do to put a contrary view to that the better.

“We all absolutely accept that we need more employment land, we just don’t want it to create more and more problems and fewer and fewer solutions.”

It was agreed that a sub-committee should be set-up to look at this application in more detail and others in neighbouring authorities when there was an impact on the borough.