Liverpool City Council to resolve stalled highways schemes

LIVERPOOL City Council is set to appoint a number of highways contractors to complete 5 schemes which had stalled, following the appointment of administrators for its original contractor VIAM.

After issuing a termination notice to VIAM, which went into administration on 1 June 2021, the City Council has gained permission to appoint Siemens to complete the traffic signals installation along County Road (A59).

It is anticipated Siemens will be on site, beginning Monday, 5 July 2021. It is expected traffic signals installation will take a few weeks to complete, which will then be followed by resurfacing works.

The City Council is also appointing Huyton Asphalt Ltd, via its planned works framework, to complete the upgrade to Kingsley Road in Toxteth. It is anticipated this contractor will be on site, on Monday, 12 July 2021.

For the remaining 3 schemes, the Council is to advertise tenders on its procurement framework with the intention of appointing contractors within the next 4 weeks.

Following the collapse of VIAM, the city Council moved swiftly to ensure the stalled schemes presented no health and safety risks to motorists and carried out assessments of what works were outstanding to inform the tendering process.

Councillor Daniel Barrington, Cabinet member for Climate Emergency, Transport and Environment, said:- "The stalling of these highways schemes has presented numerous challenges to resolve and to get them back on track. We appreciate this has been a source of frustration for motorists, residents and local businesses and as a Council we've moved as fast as possible to find a solution. The upgrades to the A59 and A565, in particular, are of huge consequence to our overall highways network as they carry tens of thousands of motorists every day and with the ending of lockdown next month, it's imperative we minimise any disruption. I'm delighted that we're now at the point of getting contactors back on site to complete these schemes."
 

School children in Sefton take action to reduce harmful emissions around their Schools
Photograph by Kois Miah / Sustrans...

SCHOOL children in Sefton completed 17,000 active journeys to School on foot, scooter or bicycle as part of Sustrans Big Pedal, the UK's largest walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting to School challenge. Sustrans

During the competition, Sefton School children were physically active:- walking, cycling, wheeling and scooting to School, and completing physical activities, for a total of 3200 hours.

Across the UK over 480,000 children took part in the Big Pedal and School communities completed over 3,400,000 active journeys to School and physical activities between:- 19 April to 30 April 2021.

This follows data released by Sport England earlier this year that suggests there was a decline in the physical activity levels of children due to the Pandemic, with almost a third of children in England engaging in less than 30 minutes of daily physical activity in the 2019 to 2020 academic year.

If the children taking active journeys during Sustrans Big Pedal had travelled to School by car instead, this could have created 11,000 kilos of CO2 and 24kg of NOx. That's enough to fill a hot air balloon with harmful CO2 emissions.

This follows a YouGov survey commissioned by Sustrans and published in April which showed:-

► 49% of UK children worry about air pollution near their School.

► 40% of UK children believe the best way to bring down levels of air pollution near their Schools is for more people to walk, cycle or scoot to School.

Speaking about the results of the Big Pedal competition, Rosslyn Colderley, Director for Sustrans in the North of England said:- "It's amazing to see how many journeys were made walking, wheeling, scooting and cycling in Sefton during this year's Big Pedal. To be able to make the Big Pedal happen once again despite the Pandemic has been truly wonderful. The results of our recent YouGov survey highlight just how concerned children are about air pollution around their local area, and that we as adults should be doing more to make it easier for people to travel actively for everyday journeys such as the School run. Sustrans is calling for national and Local Governments to prioritise high quality walking and cycling routes and to accelerate the roll out of School streets."

For more information and a list of the overall winners visit:- BigPedal.Org.UK.