Pilgrims Way closure for South East Water works

Residents have raised the further closure on Pilgrims Way next week, coming shortly after last weekend’s works.

Pilgrims Way will be closed for three days commencing 14 February between the Row Dow junction and Beechy Leas Road. This is for works by South East Water to replace a leaking stop cock at a nearby property. The stop cock is at the edge of the carriageway in a narrow part of the road, so a closure is required for the works.   

 This is therefore a closure undertaken by the utility, for which they have statutory powers. It is not a KCC closure for highways works, though a planned closure of this kind is coordinated with KCC (as opposed to emergency closures, on which KCC is not required to be consulted in advance).

Our Streetworks team are working to reduce the disruption that this will cause by requiring that the road is closed only when work is taking place (this is possible for works of this kind because they do not require, for example, a period to set). At other times, the signage will be pulled in and the road opened, though at present there are no set times for this.

It is very disruptive for residents that this comes so soon after the closure in Pilgrims Way East, and that this comes after a number of other closures. In addition to the approach described above to try to reduce this impact on residents, the works are scheduled for the half term week for the same purpose.

It’s been asked why the two sets of works could not have been carried out at the same time. The reason is that, because they were at, in effect, opposite ends of Pilgrims Way East, residents living between them (including all those in Tudor Drive and Tudor Crescent) would have been unable to get out, except perhaps via Row Dow and routes beyond that, which would in most cases have been a vastly greater diversion than is required by either set of works on their own.