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Following the submission of the original proposal, we understood that Mr Brooks had some reservations about the application as it then stood.
We have subsequently given the matter serious thought, and spoken to the surveyor and various other parties with a view to trying to rethink the matter.
After doing this, we have decided to retain much of the original application, whilst making changes wherever the original plans were unclear, or unsatisfactory. In particular, we feel that the best option is to continue with the visibility splay as originally envisaged. We believe that the safety aspects that we are trying to rectify are best served by doing so. In particular, we still feel that we need to take out the blind corner on the north side of the entrance, given that visibility at present is extremely poor, and trying to exit the lane in its current state is dangerous, to say the least. We did consider other options where trees would not have been removed, but in the end we felt that these were impractical and did not address the underlying issue of improving the safety of the entrance.
At present, we have stuck with the original proposal for a visibility splay seeded with wild grasses. However, we would be prepared to look at the possibility of tarmacking it if this was considered a better option. We did not incorporate this option in our revised plan, on the basis that this might complicate matters, and possibly necessitate the DOT taking responsibility for an added stretch of road in the future.
However, there are some differences to the original plans and we outline these below:
corner of the lower (Slaughter - 534522) field. These would be positioned randomly, and, at the suggestion of Jason Bolt of Forestry, would be a combination of goat or grey willow in the area closest to the road, then a mix of alder and ash with a few blackthorn \& rowan for colour \& berries. Spacing would average $2-3 \mathrm{~m}$ between trees. Tubes 60 or 75 cm - preferably 75 cm as one gets two ties with them. Weed control - mulch mats or glyphosate. We would likely plant a few in gaps in the roadside hedge of Slaughter field, where there are no current trees. The other 20 trees ( 90 in total in a 10:1 replacement ratio) would be alder and ash, and would go in the southern corner of the Slaughter field (534522), an area not actually farmed which already has self-seeded trees. These areas are indicated on the aerial photograph.
Doug Chalk came up with an original tree loss count of nine. Jason Bolt came up with 13. This is largely due to different methods of counting multi-stemmed trees, plus the inclusion of a small immature ash. In terms of the plans, we have stuck with the original tree count to save confusion. We would be happy to transplant the small ash to the new bank.
In terms of these amendments, we spoke to Sergeant Dyer of the traffic division of the police and he was agreeable to our notion of trying to improve access and safety aspects.
We hope that this clarifies matters and that the revised plans are drawn to satisfaction. We also intend to submit a short piece of video footage illustrating the difficulty of exiting the entrance, and showing the poor current visibility from the sight line.
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