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Planning Concern — Highway Safety

Gibraltar Corner:
Traffic & Safety.

All traffic from a proposed 420-home development would feed into Gibraltar Corner — a rural crossroads that was never designed for estate-scale traffic volumes. Up to 900 additional vehicle movements every single day.

About Gibraltar Corner

Gibraltar Corner is the key crossroads junction in Kempston Rural where four roads converge — serving as the only meaningful route in and out of the community.

  • Wood End Lane — approaching from the west
  • Green End Road — running north-south
  • Home Road — connecting eastward
  • Ridge Road — linking to the bypass and Wootton

This is a rural crossroads with limited visibility, narrow road widths, and no signals or roundabout. It was never built for estate traffic.

Impact of 420 New Homes

420 homes could generate 700–900+ additional vehicle movements per day.

Key Highway Concerns:

  • Severe peak-hour congestion at the crossroads
  • Turning conflicts and visibility constraints
  • Heavy goods vehicle movements during construction
  • School-run peak pressure on surrounding lanes
  • Rat-running through rural roads not designed for it

Cumulative Impact with Wootton

Ridge Road connects directly to Wootton, which has already seen substantial housing expansion over the past decade. The cumulative traffic impact of continued growth in this corridor must be assessed — not treated as if this application exists in isolation.

Infrastructure along the bypass corridor is already under strain. This further development would push it past its limits.

Planning Policy on Highway Safety

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) states that development should only be refused on highways grounds where residual cumulative impacts on the road network would be severe.

Given the constraints of Gibraltar Corner and the scale of this proposal, there are strong grounds that this threshold would be reached. Document what you see. Your personal evidence counts.

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