I READ Councillor Stephen Billingham's letter, in these columns last week, about the continuing road accidents on the Bradenham Road leading to Princes Risborough, where there is a bridge over the road on a corner.
When I represented as a county councillor West Wycombe and Sands in 1981, Gordon Sparrow who lives on the bend by the bridge, contacted me about this dangerous situation, and both Gordon and myself contacted the Bucks County Council's Highways Department, and many letters passed between us.
What had alerted me prior to that though, is that when I worked at Harrison & Sons Ltd, the printers in Coates Lane, High Wycombe, four young lads were killed outright at the bridge site, and the whole workforce at Harrison & Sons were devastated. Two of the boys if not three, I believe, worked there. The atmosphere for a week was devastating.
Since then, as the county councillor for West Wycombe and Sands for four years, and as a district councillor from 1983 onwards, I in my small way tried to do all that I could to persuade the authorities to recognise the dangers at the bridge and do something about it, but to no avail. Gordon Sparrow and his fellow campaigners' photographs have appeared in this newspaper for quite a long period, and it is amazing that Stephen Billingham is having to continue the campaign in 1998 that some of us were pursuing in 1981.
The Bucks Free Press has been engaged in some variety of campaigns of late, some I agree with and others that I do not support, but here is a worthy one for them to support Cllr Stephen Billingham in, before we read of further deaths at this dangerous blackspot that the Bucks County Council over many years has done nothing about.
Councillor Jim Tanner
Member for Keep Hill &
Hicks Farm Rise
Terryfield Road
High Wycombe
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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