Pendleton Road, Redhill – experimental HGV weight restriction

What we are planning?

We are installing an experimental 7.5 tons weight restriction on Pendleton Road, Redhill. This is due to safety concerns about HGVs using Pendleton Road, particularly where the road narrows and bends outside St. John's church.

The 7.5t environmental weight restriction applies to any vehicle over 7.5 tons weight (except buses) and means that any such vehicle must not use or travel through Pendleton Road, unless they are trying to gain access to any property on Pendleton Road. Additional roads, such as Church Road and Fountain Road, and cul-de-sacs off of these roads are also included within the restriction, so that heavy commercial vehicles can legally access these roads to carry out deliveries or collect household waste.

We are also going to install an experimental 7.5 tons weight restriction on the residential area to the south of Earlswood Lakes, so that those HGVs that will no longer be able to use Pendleton Road do not use Heston Road , Hanworth Road and Tollgate Avenue in order to travel between Woodhatch Road and the A23.

Again this 7.5 tons weight environmental weight restriction applies to any vehicle over 7.5 tons weight (except buses) and means that any such vehicle must not use or travel through Heston Road, Hanworth Road and Tollgate Avenue, unless they are trying to gain access to any property on these roads or the cul-de-sacs off of them to carry out deliveries or collect household waste.

We wanted to include Maple Road within this 7.5 tons weight restriction, however during a road safety audit of our proposals, both road safety engineers and Surrey Police raised concerns about the safety of heavy commercial vehicles making the tight left turn out of Woodhatch Road on to the A23. It was therefore decided that for road safety, Maple Road would not be included within the restriction at this time. Traffic using Maple Road will be monitored before and after the 7.5 tons weight restriction has been installed on the other roads.

Why is it an experimental weight restriction?

The weight restriction will be experimental at first because whenever a weight restriction is installed in one road, this could impact on other roads in the area as HGVs will use alternative routes. It is important to ensure that any restriction on Pendleton Road does not create significant road safety issues on other roads that will be used by HGVs because of this restriction, prior to installing any weight restriction permanently.

What next?

All weight restrictions that are installed on public highways involve more than the installation of road signs and require a legal document to comply with necessary regulations. This legal document and locations of regulatory signs must be carefully designed, checked and advertised.

The design of the location of the signs is now complete and we are currently working with our contractor, Milestone Infrastructure, to programme in a date in December for works to start to install the 50+ signs and 30+ new sign posts required for the signing of this 7.5t weight restriction. The installation of these signs, some of which must be lit, will take several days. All of the signs will be bagged over until work to install all of the signs for the restriction is complete. This is a legal requirement, as the restriction will not come into effect until all of the signs are installed and the legal documentation to make the restriction enforceable can be advertised.

Files available to download