Developer-funded highways improvements

The Crossroads Of Doom at Rosliston Road, Caldwell Road and Burton Road between Swadlincote and Drakelow. Image from Google.

Derbyshire’s “crossroads of doom” are set for improvement as part of a wide range of upgrades to tackle some of the county’s biggest – and most notorious – roads.

Funded by Derbyshire developers, Derbyshire County Council is set to “draw down” more than £462,000 to pay for a range of road and public transport improvements over the next year.

These fees were promised in legal agreements signed as part of planning approvals to help mitigate the impact of housing schemes in the local area.

One such improvement is £209,387 due to be spent on improvements to the highway network around the Rosliston Road, Caldwell Road and Burton Road junction, between Swadlincote and Drakelow – known locally as the “crossroads of doom” due to its accident history.

The four-way junction has been the frequent site of serious accidents, including several fatalities, which have seen it become the centre of a slew of costly improvements over the years, including many different warning signs on each of the approaches.

This next series of improvements looks to build on that, with residents regularly citing issues in planning meetings about more traffic being funnelled through the crossroads for new homes and construction of solar and battery farm schemes.

This £200,000 improvement is funded by the Drakelow Power Station project which includes more than 2,200 homes and is now nearing completion.

Meanwhile, £82,535 is due to be spent on improvements to a further notorious junction at the five-way Clock Garage Roundabout in Woodville, which has long been a traffic hotspot.

It was hoped that the £13 million Swadlincote Regeneration Route from Occupation Lane through to the A514 would alleviate pressure on the Clock Garage Roundabout junction, but this has not been the case, with officials saying this was never intended to be its function.

Homes and supermarket plans on either side of the regeneration route have long been approved and are now slowly moving forward through follow-up detailed applications on the former brownfield site.

Officials have continued to lobby HGV satnav firms about the regeneration route being the better priority for industrial vehicles.

A report from the county council says the £82,000 works are to “mitigate cross boundary traffic which arises from the development or by the early implementation of the Swad Regen Route”.

It is being funded by the development of 91 homes off Hepworth Road and the A511, on the outskirts of Woodville that actually falls within North West Leicestershire.

Here is the full list of six Derbyshire highways and public transport projects going ahead this year, funded by developers over the next year:

• £209,387 – Improvements to highways network to junction of Caldwell Road and Rosliston Road crossroads
• £16,106 – Traffic regulation order to reduce the speed limit on Drakelow Road, Walton between the power station and Walton village
• £6,173 – Investigation and implementation of traffic management for five years around Townend Farm development in Lees Lane, South Normanton
• £82,535 – Works at Clock Roundabout to mitigate cross-boundary traffic
• £31,312 – Highway and transportation improvement works linked to the Oxcroft Lane development in Bolsover
• £116,667 – Improvement of bus services on Quarry Hill, Ilkeston