The Beeston Hill Community Association (BHCA) are inviting as many local residents as possible, to join us for our next community meeting on Monday (27 January 2025) at 6:30-8pm at The Hamara Centre (Tempest Road, LS11 6RD) to urgently discuss the finalised plan for the Tempest Road/Dewsbury Road junction changes.
We are now in the official public consultation phase for the junction and only have a couple of weeks to get any comments or objections to Highways. We are encouraging all residents, especially those who live near or use the junction regularly, to take action and make your views heard.
BHCA is a community-led group which aims to give residents of Beeston Hill the opportunity to get to know neighbours, share their views on local life and be heard. We seek to work together to speak up for the area and bring about change.
Over the past year, the issue of changes to the Tempest Road/Dewsbury Road junction has rumbled on. During this time, the BHCA committee has continued to liaise with local councillors and Highways, putting pressure on them to really listen the views of local people in their plans. We had a positive face to face meeting with Highways officers in November to discuss their plan to close the central reservation at the bottom of Tempest Road and extend it towards the bottom of Colwyn Road (see image). We hoped our insights would enable changes to the plans ahead of it being finalised. Unfortunately, however, this has not been the case.
The proposal stops people turning right in and out of Tempest Road and Colwyn Road. Over various discussions, including a very well attended meeting last January (70+ people), residents have identified many flaws with this option, in particular people trying to U-turn around the ends of the reservation and the negative impact of traffic flow on smaller surrounding streets, potentially making them busier and more dangerous.
Despite taking these concerns directly to officers in our meeting, we received confirmation only last week (13 January) that the initial proposal will go ahead – hence why this is such a last-minute invitation to meet. Our meeting in January last year showed the strength of feeling on this issue, from both residents and local businesses alike. We believe it is really important that people living in our community get a chance to speak into community changes and be heard. We are asking people to stand together on this.
We have gone back to Highways this week asking if there any other options available. Unfortunately, we have to accept traffic lights will not be granted due to the other changes that would need to be done to accommodate these, in addition to the cost. At our last meeting, a resident asked if a trial could be done for this proposal. They suggested using something temporary, like big planters, to block off the reservation as planned. This could then be monitored over a period of time and then have another public consultation period. This would help both Highways and residents to see the impact of this project before it becomes permanent. We think trialling this is a good idea and could be a good compromise for both the Council and residents. Doing something like this will allow us all to see what happens and whether it does things we think it might before it becomes permanent. We have been in touch with Highways asking if this could be tried. We would be interested to hear resident’s thoughts on this idea, please leave your feedback on our Facebook page: (Beeston Hill Community Association – Leeds.
We also plan to have an additional meeting on Monday 10 February (6:30-8pm at The Hamara Centre) to give further opportunity to bring your comments, feedback or objections. Although the official deadline for comments is 7 February, we have asked Highways to extend this to 15 February, to give residents more time to feedback. We feel this deadline is much too short and doesn’t give residents or residents group enough time to respond, especially as this is such a major change to a major junction. We will keep you posted on our Facebook page about this when hear back from Highways.
As well as attending our community meeting (everyone is welcome and food is provided), we encourage you to contact Highways directly on libby.Sweeney@leeds.gov.uk, to make your views known. The more responses they get, the more weight it has. You can also comment on our Facebook page and we will send these comments to Highways. Let’s stand together and make sure our voices are heard.
This post was written by Sarah Hutchinson
Photo: Google
We encourage anyone living or working in South Leeds to use this website to tell their news. You can either use the Create an article for South Leeds Life page, or email us at: info@southleedslife.com
While you’re here, can we ask a favour?
South Leeds Life is published by a not-for-profit social enterprise. We keep our costs as low as possible but we’ve been hit by increases in the print costs for our monthly newspaper which have doubled in the last two years.
Could you help support local community news by making a one off donation, or even better taking out a supporters subscription?
Donate here, or sign up for a subscription at bit.ly/SLLsubscribe
