Will new houses be Bo'ness' road to ruin?

Bo'ness residents are looking for assurances a new 167-property housing development will not add to their flooding and traffic woes.
There are road safety concerns over the housing application.There are road safety concerns over the housing application.
There are road safety concerns over the housing application.

Householders from Drumview Gardens, Bonhard Way and other nearby streets made their feelings clear to representatives of Miller Homes during a site visit by Falkirk Council’s planning committee on Monday afternoon.

Convenor Billy Buchanan and committee members were looking at Miller Homes’ proposals to build houses on land to the south of Kinglass Cottage off Borrowstoun Road.

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During the site visit several residents brought up concerns over road safety, increased traffic, flooding and the pressure on local schools and health services additional families would create.

The main fears surrounded Borrowstoun Road, which Councillor Buchanan, having heard accounts of the drivers’ antics on the road, referred to as “Le Mans”.

A householder said: “There have been three fatalities on the road.

“The cars use this as a rat run and some of them go 60 or 70 mph on this stretch of the road and literally take off.

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“If you are going to be bringing these two new access roads and all these homes and extra traffic to the area you are going to exacerbate the problem.”

Miller Homes’ plan includes a mixture of two-storey detached and semi-detached houses, cottage flats within two-storey buildings, two vehicular access points off Borrowstoun Road, landscaping, a footpath network and a Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS).

Andy McArthur, Miller Homes technical director, said: “There will be improvement works carried out to this road.

“We will be putting in gullies to take some water off the road back into our development.

“I genuinely believe what we have planned will improve the situation significantly.”

The matter comes before the planning committee on Wednesday, February 24.