A5036 Maintenance

At the turn of the year, we began a piece of work which affects several of our member groups and many residents living alongside the A5036 corridor.

In January, we held an open meeting at The Railway pub in Seaforth, inviting A5036 residents to come and share their experiences of living alongside the busy trunk road.

Why did we do this?

This followed the government's cancellation of the proposed Port of Liverpool Access Road in October 2024 and a desire within our alliance to reduce the impact of the port's operations on our area; starting with the main route.

There was a good spread of attendees, covering Princess Way, Church Road and Dunnings Bridge Road.

We used the information gathered - along with the topics covered in our initial letter to National Highways (which you can read again here) - to prepare the agenda.

Subsequently, we and residents met with senior representatives of National Highways' North West division on Monday 27th January at the Park Hotel, on Dunnings Bridge Road itself.

This included their Regional Director, Amy Williams; Head of Planning & Development, Bruce Parker; Head of Service Delivery, Stuart Rigby; and Maintenance & Response Service Manager, Dawn Connick.

Sefton Council was also represented by Assistant Director for Highways & Public Protection, Peter Moore.

Given that this was the first meeting of this particular group, there was a lot of ground to cover. We were grateful to all attendees for giving up their time and for staying longer than planned.

Minutes of the meeting can be read in full here:

Meeting Minutes - SSCA National Highways - FINAL.pdf

Download PDF • 240KB

What's been happening?

Since this meeting, a number of clean-up operations have been announced and taken place along the A5036, including this Sefton-led operation during the summer.

Whilst some of this work was planned, we also hope that our meeting prompted action being taken on other issues we raised.

We are aware of some concerns around the re-growth of vegetation and a fear that the clean-up operation might be a one-off.

In addition, there is the ongoing situation regarding the failure to replace the footbridge over the route at the Park Lane junction. This issue was covered in our meeting with National Highways, and a recent Echo article confirmed that it is far from resolved. We were asked by the Echo to comment further on this, which you can read here.

We believe this situation is unacceptable and back demands for the bridge to be urgently reinstated.

What next?

With the latest phase of works having been completed, we are picking this up again and have been considering how our alliance can help.

In order for residents living alongside the route to have confidence that the road is being regularly monitored, maintained and that the accountable body will meet its commitments, we will soon be contacting National Highways and Sefton Council again.

We will be asking for the creation and publication of a new maintenance programme for the full length of the A5036.

This must clearly detail each task, the owner (National Highways or Sefton Council) the frequency of maintenance/checks, and approximate dates for the work to take place, with a fresh version produced every year.

We have seen a previous maintenance plan in the form of a lengthy spreadsheet, but as far as we are aware, this isn't made public and it isn't easy to understand.

Making this plan available to the public will give reassurance that works are indeed planned AND mean that the relevant organisation can be held to account if these don't happen.

We also want to explore the creation of an A5036 working group, where residents, community groups, schools and other stakeholders directly affected by the route are able to meet with National Highways and Sefton Council on a regular basis to flag concerns, provide feedback (good and bad) on work undertaken and work collaboratively to improve the route from this point on.

In other words, we want to give the people affected a voice.

In the meantime, below is the very latest update from National Highways, detailing the work it has undertaken this year.

This, along with Sefton Council's own work should set a benchmark for maintenance of the route.

Seeing this committed to in the form of a publicly available maintenance plan, with a regular, collaborative forum to monitor progress will hopefully improve things for all parties.