THE majority of residents living in the Highridge area of Alton are calling on Hampshire County Council to close permanently their street to prevent it being used as a rat run.

The street had been closed for several weeks, adjacent to the Kings Road junction, to facilitate the connection of a new water mains.

As a result, any through traffic has been redirected via Basingstoke Road and Pertuis Avenue, leaving residents free from vehicles using Highridge as a short-cut.

“For Highridge residents this has been a very safe and peaceful time as the constant stream of motor vehicles, which continually use the Highridge as a rat run to avoid the Pertuis Avenue/Basingstoke Road junction, have been prevented from doing so. The street recently reopened and the rat running is building up again,” said a spokesman for the residents.

Highridge residents have been campaigning for many years to have something done to deter rat running through a street which is clearly signposted ‘access only’, but their calls for action have been met with a statement from Hampshire County Council that this is a policing issue.

A residents’ spokesman continued: “The police are unable to take action as they do not have the resources to police the access-only street and also consider that there is no safety issue.”

To compound the situation, it is understood that neither the county council nor East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) has the funds or the will to seek ways of preventing the rat run, by the installation of traffic-calming measures, and so no progress has been made from this perspective.

Mike Heelis, the Highridge Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator, said: “Alton is set to grow in size by more than 2000 dwellings between 2013 and 2028, which will result in a commensurate population growth. This could be up to 5,000-plus additional residents which is more than 25 per cent growth in the town population.

“No significant road improvements that matches this growth are planned to be put in place to prevent growing traffic delays.”

And he continued: “We already know this as EHDC and Hampshire County Council jointly funded an Alton Transport Strategy, published on June 22, 2015, and available for scrutiny on the EHDC website, which provides evidence to confirm it. The report assesses the transport implications of current residential development of sites identified within EHDC development plans and the Alton Town Design Statement. So the situation on the Highridge can only get worse when the low levels of planned road infrastructure improvement fails to match the transport strategy traffic-flow expectations.”

Highridge residents have run their own Speedwatch scheme and supplied the data from this to council representatives but, they say, “to no avail”.

Mr Heelis added: “Despite the promise of improvements to the Basingstoke Road/Pertuis Avenue junction from funds generated by new housing, this will not have any impact on Highridge rat running. This is because it is a shorter distance from Pertuis Avenue to the Basingstoke Road via Highridge by 0.2 miles than it is by using the main highway.

“Because rat runners want to capitalise on the advantage of using the Highridge they do so at speed. For residents, this places an intolerable burden on them in terms of road safety, noise and air pollution in what is a designated and signposted ‘access only’ suburban street.”

Spurred on by the clear benefits derived during the enforced closure of Highridge due to the roadworks, residents took an informal poll to see who would support a permanent closure.

According to Mr Heelis, the result was “a significant majority in favour of permanent closure” and, as such, resident are calling on Hampshire County Council to “take action now to implement this”.

Mr Heelis said: “We are seeking permanent closure of the Highridge to prevent rat running on our street and ask for Hampshire County Council to please support us in this request.”