At the recent full council meeting of Cornwall Council, James Millidge, chair of the A38 safety campaign group Safe38, took their campaign back to councillors to try and gain their backing.

As stated in his question to council, the group is looking for Cornwall Council to support their bid to achieve the series of short-term safety measures proposed by National Highways as part of RIS 3 pipeline scheme sooner than planned.

The group, set up five years ago, is campaigning to save lives and livelihoods on a road they deem no longer to be fit for purpose. He asked the assembled members of Cornwall Council and their cabinet in public questions whether the council was working to ensure that the small-scale affordable safety interventions identified in the recent summer National Highways consultation be delivered earlier than the proposed 2028.

He said: “Currently average speed cameras and other small-scale affordable safety interventions identified in a recent consultation will not be delivered until 2028 at the earliest. Will Cornwall Council Lobby National Highways earnestly to deliver these interventions far sooner?”

Cllr Connor Donnithorne, the new Cornwall Council cabinet member for Transport who took up the role from Philip Desmonde at the beginning of November, reassured Mr Millidge that road safety, particularly along the A38, is an absolute priority of theirs and that meetings had already been set up to meet with the South West regional director of National Highways in January.

Indeed, he promised: “I will continue to work with officers in our Transport team and Sheryll Murray MP to ensure we can secure as many improvements along the A38 as early as possible.”

The summer A38 National Highways consultation which proposed a set of safety measures for the A38 was met by scepticism by Safe38 who have been campaigning for major improvements to the road and even took their campaign to Westminster in 2018 to a former Secretary of State for Transport.

Mr Millidge said: “The case for investment on the road which forms part of the strategic network should be treated as a matter of urgency.

“Within days of each other recent flooding left cars stranded at Notter Bridge with passengers needing to be rescued by the fire service, and a lorry blocked the railway bridge at Trerulefoot.

“Cornwall’s rail connection to the rest of the UK is always only one collision away from being severely disrupted were a lorry strike to cause structural damage to the low bridge along this busy route.

“We know that we have the support of our local MP Sheryll Murray who herself in June 2018 agreed that the road is dangerous.

“We now need to ensure we have the full support of Cornwall Council, so that the A38 doesn’t slip down the list of priorities – especially at a time when any Devolution deal from Westminster seems to be taking up a fair bit of the council’s time and energy.”