Iconic British farm store liable to closure for one ‘damaging’ motive | UK | News | EUROtoday

An award-winning farm store on the UK’s “best” motorway service station is liable to closure from plans to close a junction for 4 years. Westmorland Farmshop and Kitchen at Tebay Services on the M6, which was named the perfect motorway stop-off within the nation final yr, might undergo a significant drop in prospects because of Britain’s longest-planned roadworks venture, it has been warned. National Highways mentioned the work to switch eight bridges on a file-mile stretch of the motorway in Cumbria will start subsequent spring and contain the northbound and southbound carriageways every closing for two-year intervals.

Sarah Dunning, whose household established Westmorland Services, mentioned: “Nobody is disputing that the bridges need replacing but this is going to hurt businesses, residents and farmers who use the junction as part of their everyday life. We know from previous experience that roadworks on this scale are going to affect footfall.”

She added that whereas the farm store has its personal entry highway, this might turn into clogged up with site visitors, resulting in much less guests and making it tougher for workers to get into work.

“People will have to go seven miles north to the next junction and drive all the way south again to get to Tebay, which they are not going to want to do,” Ms Dunning advised The Telegraph.

“Over the course of four years or more, people are going to change their travel habits – and for businesses, that could be not just damaging but final.”

Westmorland has quite a lot of awards to its title, together with from the Royal Agricultural Society and Which?, and sells produce from over 130 native and regional suppliers.

Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale mentioned the junction closure might additionally affect the broader economic system and “be the killing of many shops”.

“The extent of disruption will be huge,” he mentioned. “There’s been absolutely zero consultation or thought about mitigation or any kind of reaching out.

“It appears to be that National Highways went up the highway, noticed how stunning it’s and thought, ‘Well, no one lives right here so we simply want to fret concerning the engineering and never fear concerning the affect on the neighborhood’.”

Mr Farron has previously called for National Highways to build temporary slip roads while the work is ongoing, something the public body has said it will consider.

A spokesperson said: “Junction 38 will nonetheless stay open to site visitors, other than throughout a restricted variety of occasional in a single day or weeknight closures.

“Our aim is to cause as little disruption as possible. That’s why we are working with local communities and businesses nearby to limit the impact.”