Wednesday's letters including 'Safety problems obvious from the start'

SIR – I refer to the recent report by the county council regarding the management failures associated with the opening of the Ketch Roundabout and the subsequent safety issues.
Safety concerns regarding the roundabout and the potential for ”side sweep collisions” at the merging lane were blatantly obvious from the pre-contract drawings and these concerns were raised with the council and their designers at the St Peter’s open meeting. 
This notwithstanding the third party designers should have appreciated the possible safety issues during the design phase of the project as this would have formed part of the Stage 1 safety audit; it certainly should not have required that these issues were flagged up by a post construction audit.
The comments by Mr Hobbs that the scheme was opened to traffic a week ahead of schedule due to some communication breakdown raises serious concerns regarding the overall management of the Highways Department. His statement that following the opening of the scheme (of which he had now become belatedly aware) the “air turned blue” presumably due to his berating his staff to whom he had apparently devolved all responsibility, simply beggars belief. 
His further statement that the department can only function through devolved responsibility begs the question as to his function in the organisation. That he then goes on to further state that all the staff to whom he had devolved responsibility had manager in their title and this therefore implied that they had the necessary competence also defies belief – Mr Hobbs you have the title of Corporate Director in Charge of Infrastructure, a higher level of “manager” but clearly no more competent!
I would also challenge the assertion that the council had never had a safety glitch like this before, what about the Whittington Roundabout and the Warndon Village works; both these schemes raised previously unappreciated safety issues after opening.
Given that the Ketch Roundabout was the largest road scheme being undertaken in Worcestershire at the time and being cognizant of the criticisms raised regarding the Whittington Roundabout I would have expected Mr Hobbs to have taken a very close interest in the design and commissioning of the Ketch Roundabout.
The future measures that have been put in place to prevent a re-occurrence of the above problems, appear to still leave Mr Hobbs out of the loop (and presumably responsibility) in that oversight has now been given  to the council’s senior head of service managers . We should note and be comforted that safety assessments are now to be carried out by the fire service; I have a great deal of respect for the fire service, they carry out a huge range of difficult and challenging tasks for which they are trained, I do not believe however that their training extends to highway design and highway scheme safety audits.
Having worked on major highways projects for over forty years both in this country and overseas I have never come across such mismanagement and lack of expertise from the top down as that exhibited by Worcestershire County Council. I reiterate that I believe the county council’s chief executive needs to carry out a root and branch review of the management procedures, qualifications and competence of the Highways Department staff if similar issues are to be avoided in the future.
DC GILCHRIST
St Peter’s, Worcester
 
No wonder there are so many atheists
SIR – In reply to Andrew Bull (December 7), Yes. Very intelligent man Anthony Price does exist, so do I. We are both not easily brainwashed by gullible people who still believe Santa Claus comes down the chimney. Here’s just one reason why God does NOT exist.
You can do everything right in life, be kind, caring, considerate, give to charities and be the perfect 100 per cent citizen. But brother are you heading for trouble. Your life will be one living disaster after another, continuous bad health and die a slow excruciating death in pain and agony, inflicted on you by this so called God of Love.
Or you can do the opposite. Tread on everyone’s help, be a nasty bit of work, then join SS Gestapo or ISIS sadists. They you will have good health, good luck, live to 98 and die quickly – no pain in your sleep.
Finally no wonder the world is full of atheists.
K HEMMING
Worcester