Motorway fences

Bruce Almighty

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Warwickshire
it's 30 years since work started on the M40 & the fences are showing their age.

I know you fence against your own stock, but . . .

The motorway comes through your farm & you can't stop it. The road is maintained / resurfaced regularly. The fences are forgotten about. There's no maintenance on the other side & hedge plants & trees grow through it & damage it.

Those of you who have had motorway fences for longer, what have you done about it ?
 

haymaker80

Member
Location
Stafford
It's up to the highways authorities to fence stock off motorways. Keep complaining to them, send photos of the worst bit of fence, tell them there's a danger to public safety from straying livestock etc etc.
We've got the m6 through our farm. We managed to get them to replace a stretch of original (late 1960s?) fence a couple of years ago. It took a bit of toing and froing but they did it in the end. Just got one more field still with the original fence we're trying to get them to replace now....
 

Bruce Almighty

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Warwickshire
See photo
 

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foxbox

Member
Location
West Northants
As @haymaker80 says keep on at them. We have a railway line through the farm; a cow got hit one night and derailed a tamper train running up the track but it has been accepted that the fence was the responsibility of Network Rail and it has been replaced. The railways have a regular (6 monthly?) fence inspection :ROFLMAO: which signs off the fencing as being in good order however it's not clear how you can tell this from sitting in a car 3 fields away. Maybe your fence is inspected in a similar fashion?

Somewhere there will be a regional contact responsible for fencing (or Highway Access Prevention or similarly grand title); get them tracked down and keep bothering them until they fix it.
 

yellowbelly

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
N.Lincs
As @haymaker80 and @foxbox say, you just have to keep at them. Our original bit of the M180 had sheep netting nailed on the post and rails when the road was first built. When this rusted away it took about 2 yrs to get it and some rotten posts and rails replaced.
In the final letter I wrote to the managing director of the firm who had the motorway maintenance contract, I asked him to write back and confirm who I should ask my insurers to sue in the event of an accident caused by straying sheep - him or the Minister of Transport. A few weeks later they replaced the lot.
 
Can relate, imagine I'm 30 miles towards london from you.

The highways agency signed a 1 page contract (you get the idea) to maintain the road etc. They have no incentives and spent as little as possible unlike more modern contracts. It's due for renewal soon so a lot may change.

They have just replaced a load along us, they don't stock fence as standard, only if you have stock, which we don't now. If we then put stock in they would come back and re fence!!

I complain by email, we have deer runs straight on to the road. I pointed it out and they came over within 24 hrs to check. Then do nothing. Put in writing that it's a public risk of motorway pile up which covers yourself.

Things will change but god knows when.
 
maybe now but I doubt it back then. now a days they get a % bonus for keeping hrs of traffic jams down. not so back then. it will be a very basic contract with acres of a room for grey areas.

we asked them to plant some trees on their side of the fence. they wanted us to pay for it and the maintenance for the next 20 yrs!!
 

haymaker80

Member
Location
Stafford
Somewhere there will be a regional contact responsible for fencing (or Highway Access Prevention or similarly grand title); get them tracked down and keep bothering them until they fix it.
We went through our parish council initially and they knew who to contact. Be prepared to go round in circles with it. Highways agency will say it's up to their subcontractors to maintain fences. They will say highways agency dont give them enough funding for replacing fences and so on. Main thing to stress to them if you have livestock is the safety issue of straying livestock.
 

foxbox

Member
Location
West Northants
We went through our parish council initially and they knew who to contact. Be prepared to go round in circles with it. Highways agency will say it's up to their subcontractors to maintain fences. They will say highways agency dont give them enough funding for replacing fences and so on. Main thing to stress to them if you have livestock is the safety issue of straying livestock.

Network Rail have replaced the old 5 strand wire fences with a shiny new 6' tall fence that looks like this to stop animals and people straying on to the track o_O. They've done all the way from London to Rugby so it's quite a big fence... About 100m of it blew over two days after they put it up on ours; turns out contractors digging the post holes can't dig deeper than 1 spade depth and 1 bag of postcrete doesn't work very well if the fence is straight!

As you know it'll inevitably be half-arsed when they finally get round to doing it but at least it's then a new half-arsed effort rather than a rotten one.

HWMartinMain.jpg
 

Tom_o_m

Member
We had the waterboard actively knocking over fencing to maintain the ditches (somerset levels) along the A38 which is a very busy road.

Obviously I can recommend one way of limiting the deer related RTAs!
 

Woolly

Member
Location
W Wales
Given the dodgy fencing, it's surprising that animals don't cause more RTAs on the M-ways.

What is the insurance position if they do? Drivers should be prepared for sheep, deer, badgers, kids, on lesser roads, but not on M-ways.
 

Tom_o_m

Member
Interesting that in some parts of hampshire the M3 acts as a barrier limiting the range of fallow deer. So the most abundant large deer in the south are obviously a little road shy (doesn't stop countless human fatalities annually due to RTAs on smaller roads especially around ashdown). Roe and muntjac seem to be much bolder with motorways.
 

Punch

Member
Location
Warwickshire
M40 at Bishops Tachbrook was done last year. 1st I knew was when saw the track around the newly planted field. Had gone quite a distance between junctions.
The landowner had been asked and didn't tell us:mad:.The contractors had been fairly tidy but we would have delayed drilling if had known. 4m width from gate to M40 and along the length was well tracked. They had mini digger dug away patches where brash etc had grown through fence. Made holes into next door so only had 1 access from road:mad:.
Would have been nice for compensation for crop loss and repair fence into next door but Landowner didn't keep any details:banghead:.
I'll try and get a photo when I'm next over there. Post and rails with rabbit netting and angled top wire to prevent deer. Least it was no cost to us or landowner:)
 

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