WHEN you’ve already made five tweaks since building it in 2014, which all failed to make our Mile End roundabout much safer, what do you try next?

Well, you put ‘another’ roundabout slap next to the failed one! I kid you not, as this is what Shropshire Council has come up with.

We fear for what it has told us: “Traffic heading to Shrewsbury from the Wrexham direction would bypass the busy Mile End roundabout and use the new island” .. alongside it!

The council claims it to both be the answer to improving the capacity here on the A5 – as well as being the solution for 600 new houses planned for alongside Shrewsbury Road.

It sets you wondering why they don’t just scrap the lot for a set of intelligent traffic lights, like the successful ones at the end of Maesbury Road?

Steve Davenport, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways, representing St Martins, who you’ll remember last month ‘guaranteed’ us that the A5 from this point to Shrewsbury would be dualled, adds: “We’ve come up with an innovative ‘dumbbell style’ solution, which also opens up land opportunities!” Enough said!

Ironworks saga is over!

JUST a couple of miles south on the A5 – and whatever your views are on the British Ironworks – getting the go-ahead must have felt summer had come early for them.

It unanimously won the hearts of Shropshire councillors, a full decade after founder Clive Knowles failed to secure full planning permission.

What a long hard grind for our mega attraction, which claims it’s proved its popularity through its thousands of visitors.

It took an eternity to resolve, because planners probably wanted to show you cannot ride roughshod over its rules.

Now it just needs the same softer planning hearts for Sophie Dillon’s two year fight to get planning for a restaurant at her Hayes Barn B&B in Racecourse Road!

Taking a new course...

EVEN further up the A5 drivers who currently cringe at wending their way into congested Shrewsbury, then finding car parking near its station, could become a worry of the past.

Shropshire Council is just ‘exploring’ the idea of an out of town ‘parkway station’ at Preston Boats, where the A5 meets the A49!

It would prevent passengers having to go into the town and would boast plentiful parking. It’s just a bud of an idea at present, but a clever one, giving out of town train access.

Meanwhile 3,000 population Baschurch asks why its old station cannot be reopened, with parking. Watch this space.

Have we struck gold?!

FINALLY, are you planning to join the gold rush, now ‘significant’ amounts of new gold have been found at Dolgellau?