Strawberry Line will go ahead, council leader says

Work to rebuild a traffic-free route across a rural area will continue despite financial pressures, a council leader has confirmed.

Mendip District Council has been working to complete the Strawberry Line in Somerset, to encourage people to walk and cycle.

It will eventually run uninterrupted from Yatton to Shepton Mallet.

Council leader Ros Wyke has re-iterated that work on the path will continue under the new unitary authority.

Ms Wyke - whose ward includes the village - told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the active travel was a priority for the council.

"We have been quite adept at getting funding from external sources, not just from the taxpayer," said Ms Wyke, who added that volunteers and local contractors would help to keep costs down.

The newest section of the Strawberry Line has recently opened in the village of Westbury-sub-Mendip, running about one kilometre between Station Road and Erlon Lane.

Ms Ward has confirmed work on the remaining sections of the path will continue once the new unitary Somerset Council takes control in April, in spite of the challenging financial situation facing the country.

Somerset Council needs to find more than £38m in additional savings in its first year.

The Strawberry Line forms part of the Somerset Circle which, when completed, will form a 76-mile traffic-free circuit which would link the north Somerset coast (including Weston-super-Mare and Clevedon), Bristol, Bath, the Mendip Hills and Cheddar.

A further extension, as far as Old Bridge Lane, was identified as part of a £19.3m bid to the government's levelling up fund, which, if approved, would fund numerous regeneration projects in Cheddar, Highbridge and Shepton Mallet.

Volunteers have also planted 2,500 hedging whips along the new section, which will eventually grow into thick hedgerow to act as a further buffer between the path and local farmland.

Following the delivery of a short section between Wells and the Charlie Bingham site in Dulcote, the council is currently working on delivering two additional sections of the Strawberry Line in Shepton Mallet - one between Summerhill Lane and Kent Lane, and one through its own car park off Cannard's Grave Road.

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