Batchworth Bridge Forum – BCC response & petition
Message from Batchworth Community Council (BCC)
Dear Resident,
Thank you for braving the cold and attending the Batchworth Bridge Forum, hosted by the Rickmansworth & District Residents’ Association (RDRA) on the Wednesday 29th January.
Batchworth Community Council (BCC) has collated your comments and met County Councillor Reena Ranger to discuss them.
Cllr Ranger said, “Thank you for taking the time to talk to RDRA and Batchworth Community Council – I will be discussing the feedback with Hertfordshire County Council. These will be very helpful for improving Hertfordshire’s initial proposals sent to BCC along with the expert analysis I funded.”
Since the meeting, Batchworth Community Council and Cllr Ranger have raised the ‘small’ improvements with Hertfordshire County Council (HCC), to see if they can go ahead without a wider scheme.
In addition, a resident who attended the meeting has launched a petition for Three Rivers District Council to part-fund the works to the crossing using Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL): paid by developers to improve infrastructure locally.
The petition can be found on the Three Rivers Website https://my.threerivers.gov.uk/ please search for “Make Batchworth Bridge Crossing Safe for all users”. To sign the petition log in with your usual Three Rivers user name and password or register if you’ve not used the TRDC site before.
CIL was discussed at the forum last week. In total, £3.5 million has been paid for developments in Batchworth – about half of all the CIL paid across the district. However, 85% of it goes to Three Rivers, and other bodies have to apply for it.
BCC backed a Hertfordshire County Council bid to help fund the crossing, but this was refused by Three Rivers in December. The petition is for Three Rivers to rethink its decision.
BCC and Cllr Ranger will be in touch as soon as we have some news to give you on this project. Again, thank you for attending and your comments.
In the meantime, please visit https://rickmansworthresidents.org/ to sign up for news from the RDRA.
Best wishes,
From all of us at BCC and your County Councillor Reena Ranger
1 Comment
Susan Lynch · 7th March 2025 at 4:42 pm
I have long been worried about the safety of the Batchworth Bridge, mainly from the point of view of a driver. I always drive as slowly as possible and try to scan each part of the crossing as l approach it, including especially the posts etc at each end where the visibility is quite unclear and confusing. I approve of all the improvements suggested, including lighting, white paint instead of black, though l thought a bright fluorescent paint or covering would be even better, and if allowed traffic lights.
Most people wear dark clothes, especially trousers etc, which makes them even more indistinguishable from the black posts.
Comments are closed.