Meeting about Blithfield and the B5013/B5014

Today a multiagency meeting was held regarding the ongoing issues at Blithfield Reservoir and the surrounding roads, chaired by County Councillor Catherine Green. Representatives from various local Parish Councils were heard alongside a list of concerns raised directly to MP Dave Robertson, who also attended the meeting.

After a lengthy discussion it was requested that a number of agencies go out to collect more data in order to facilitate long term change in the area. This includes Staffordshire Police. We will be looking to utilise our Special Constables to facilitate impromptu speed sessions along the Reservoir and surrounding roads in the coming months with a view to provide supporting evidence at the next meeting in a few months time.

On top of this, I will be looking to host a Community Engagement event (location TBD) in December. The main reason for this will be to collate evidence submitted by local residents in advance of the next meeting. I would like to reach out to as many residents as possible in a push to finally get the change we need for this area. Please share this Smart Alert with others so they can be made aware. The data we are mainly looking to collect is;

I will send a further Smart Alert to residents with the exact date and time of this meeting closer to December so that anyone who isn't able to attend in person can still submit their evidence to me at the event by proxy. Ideally I can take the data from you directly on paper or a similar medium so I can compile the information away from the event itself so as to not take away from time with residents. If you are able to do this I will greatly appreciate it.

I still strongly recommend residents report incidents via 101/Online Digital Reporting/999 (in the case of emergencies) so that we can log incidents to be used to support further long term action. The data will be brought with me to the next meeting (date TBD but will be in a few months) and we have received verbal confirmation that this will be accepted by other agencies to support change.

I appreciate this is not the news you have been hoping for, and we echo that frustration ourselves. We have a plan forwards and other agencies are in agreement that with enough data we should be able to resolve these issues. It has been a long time coming for too many of us, but it appears that we are finally going in the right direction.