Windsor Cordon to become permanent?
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1ERKSHIRE County Council wants its controversial Windsor 2ordon to become permanent, and is making moves to put it nto effect in November.
This follows the presentaion of a report last week by he cquncil's Heavy Commer:ial Vehicles Group which uggests that some local iauliers are benefiting from he restrictions on heavy ;oods vehicles in the town.
It says that the number of reticles over three tons using he cordon roads has fallen rom 2850 to 1510 in each 12our day, but it does accept at ,he other roads now carry realer flows of heavy lorry -affic.
Advertisements are being osted, probably this week ccording to a council spokesIan, and a six-week consul ttive period will follow.
The future of the cordon will e discussed then by the Berklire Environment CommitT, and the full council is to al its fate at the end of ovember. A decision must be tken then either to make the order permanent or to scrap it completely.
But parties affected by the cordon feel they are in a vacuum until October, as the Court of Appeal is then to consider Mr Justice Neill's decision to dismiss the Freight Transport Association and Road Haulage Association's objections to the cordon.
An FTA spokesman told CM this week that it is not surprised by the council's move, but added that the cordon is having a serious effect on costs to industry.
"By our computations, the scheme will have cost industry £750,000 by the end of its first 18 months. It will also cost an extra 100,000 gallons of fuel, which is the equivalent of 20 tanker loads."
RHA Southern area secretary Albert Simpson said: "To date, the council hasn't put a convincing case for the cordon before us.
"This whole thing should be left until the M25 is built. Then the problem will disappear," he added.
The council's report acknowledges that the overall north-south traffic problems in East Berkshire will not be solved until the M25 is built as a link between the M40 and M4.