Eye community's anger as council lifts HGV restrictions

Suffolk County Council has announced the Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO) will be lifted in Eye because of negative feedback from surrounding villages.

The decision has been slammed Eye Town Council and residents who say the county council are "not following their own rules". 

The restrictions were brought in last May because of safety concerns about lorries rattling through the town, risking pedestrian safety.

An Eye Town Council spokesman said: “Suffolk County Council is not following its own rules.

"Highways own statistics show that Eye Town is carrying an abnormally high HGV load for a conservation town which is not a preferred Suffolk Highways Lorry Route. Indeed the Suffolk Lorry Route map shows Eye has local delivery access only.

“The revocation was based largely on parishes on the preferred lorry route picking up the extra traffic, Suffolk County Council are ignoring their own highway policies.”

Debenham, Hoxne, and Stradbroke are among the villages which raised their HGV traffic had increased with Eye’s traffic restriction.

But many Eye residents echo the anger of the Town Council.

Nick England, a resident of Eye, Suffolk, said: “We are very, very disappointed, no, really angry that it's being removed and left to die.

“Since the implementation of the ETRO, Eye has become a far safer town with significantly reduced pollution levels due to the reduction of truck traffic. The campaign to put this ETRO in place was hard fought for, and transformed the roads plagued by huge trucks every few minutes from noisy and downright dangerous to a much more acceptable and liveable situation.

“Sadly, truck numbers are now creeping back up again, and I fear once word is out, we are fair game.

“The decision to revoke the ETRO appears to be driven solely by political expediency, sacrificing the safety and well-being of Eye's residents for the convenience of other parishes on the preferred Lorry Route.”

He continued: “It is outrageous that Suffolk County Council is ignoring its own highway policies to the detriment of Eye, and we demand immediate action to rectify this situation for the sake of our community's safety and well-being.”

Suffolk County Council said they would work with Eye to look at other ways to tackle HGV traffic.

After the announcement the restrictions would be lifted, Richard Smith, Suffolk County Council's cabinet member for economic development, skills, transport strategy and waste, said: "Unfortunately, restricting HGV access in Eye has only moved the problem to other communities, which is not acceptable.

“I understand that this is an important and upsetting issue for many people in Eye, but solving this type of problem in a rural county with few good quality routes is far from easy.

"We will continue to look at ways to mitigate the heavy traffic in Eye, including engineering measures and potentially different types of traffic restrictions.

“However, an overwhelming number of people were opposed to this restriction, and it is only right that we take their views into account and bring the experiment to an end.”