If you’ve ever driven through the Upper Calder Valley from Halifax to Todmorden, you’ll know there is only one significant road through it – the A646. A road that sees over 9,000 vehicles pass every day (a bit under the 14,000/day claimed by local activists), including many HGVs, especially when the M62 is closed. So, when this vital lifeline was suddenly and completely closed on 13 December, the least that residents wanted was a strategic crisis plan to deal with the inevitable serious disruption.
It seems unimaginable to fully close a main arterial route in December – the time when most local businesses rely on additional seasonal visitor numbers to generate the turnover that will see them through the lean months of the following year – and even more so, to do it with a constantly shifting timescale for re-opening.
It also seems bizarre not to have accounted for the diversionary route, over the moor tops, becoming hazardous and at times impassable during an entirely predictable (and well-forecast) week of winter snow and ice. Or that a combination of bad weather and the holiday season would significantly slow the repair work.
Yet these things and so much more happened. The impact of six weeks of miserable chaos, uncertainty and disruption has been threefold: it has affected people’s daily lives with a burden of significant added stress, it has stretched people and businesses to their economic limits, and it has pushed more people into cars for longer journeys, completely counter to local and national environmental efforts to reduce car and fossil fuel dependency.
Emergency repairs (again)
The December closure at Charlestown was an emergency when a sinkhole appeared, but it has long been a known trouble spot. Indeed, photos exist of a similarly huge hole in the road at that exact same spot in 1972.
On 9 January 2024, further repairs had been carried out and, on 27 February 2024, Hebden Royd town independent councillor Rebecca Boden, received a copy of a brief email from Calderdale Highways department acknowledging the complexity of the problem, and stating, “…it is taking time to come to what we believe is a satisfactory engineering solution” but that the council was, “…treating this as a priority”. This does still seem to raise the question of why the works could not have been scheduled for a less disruptive and potentially drier time of year, before it became a winter emergency.
The repeated patches and repairs had not fixed the underlying problem, merely smothered it in an uncharacteristically deep layer of tarmac, blackly symbolic of a lack of both root cause analysis and adequate prioritisation. Indeed, the long-standing nature of this problem is one of its most troubling aspects.
Cracked culverts and sewer pipes
It seems that the cause was both a leaking culvert, transporting hill-water runoff under the road, and a damaged sewer pipe. The surrounding earth had then become super-saturated (‘gravy’ in Boden’s vivid description) and eroded, leading to collapse. No doubt a chicken-and-egg causality debate over precise liability will occupy Calderdale Council and Yorkshire Water lawyers for some time to come.
In the interim, any attempts at crisis management PR consisted of conciliatory messages from Calderdale Council and Yorkshire Water, including repeated public assurances via X that work was being completed as fast as possible, including over the Christmas/New Year holiday period.
Unfortunately for them, local residents dutifully monitoring the situation and noting contractor activity (or lack of) on site, begged to differ. Everyone understood that the work – in a confined space thought to be some seven metres deep – was difficult and unpleasant. But residents felt angry with what felt like empty platitudes and half-truths in the face of their own eye-witness evidence.
There was also the environmental impact of the incessant noise of machinery, like the pumps regularly removing excess water and sewage. One particularly noisy generator was identified as running a rest break cabin for site workers. Small wonder that those families who could opted to relocate temporarily.
Local business suffers
Paul Jackson of Valley Fuels, a wood and coal supplier forlorn in the middle of the cordoned-off zone, estimated losses in the region of £60,000 of turnover at what would normally be his busiest time of year. Wheeling stock in a barrow out to customers’ cars beyond the roadblock, he resignedly anticipated that months of compensation claims and counterclaims lay ahead.
Although Jackson was able to use a small ‘back road’ route to get to work, his regular supplier was not so fortunate. Jackson negotiated smaller and more frequent deliveries, but that only increased his operating costs. Then, in January, British Gas gamely joined in, opening road works on this route too, making Jackson’s drive to work, in his words, ‘a slalom’.
Emergency road signage was no help, although the council did try to make improvements. ‘Road Closed’ and ‘Diversion’ signs had been placed up to several miles away, but they were often not clear where exactly the closure occurred. One business to suffer from this was The Stubbbing Wharf, a pub located at the spot where the road closures began. With only local access traffic still permitted, the road fell eerily silent. The pub’s new owners had already been hit by flooding in their cellar in November, and this was a further blow to trade.
Public transport chaos
Public transport was poorly coordinated. Some buses ran the diversionary route and there was a shuttle bus, but only on one side of The Hole. Life quickly became defined by which side of The Hole you were on, dividing families and friends who had to pass through a no-man’s land area on foot. Back in the 1970s, people remembered shuttles running to each side of The Hole, so passengers could walk between the two halves of the service.
There were gaps in timetabling, frequent cancellations and, on one route, a complete absence of buses on Sunday. Drivers did voluntary overtime on this route, but it was not timetabled or included on the mobile app, so it was virtually useless. First Bus’s response was particularly poor with the app and signage in Halifax bus station left inaccurate.
Students travelling to college in Burnley really struggled to keep to timetable. The train was the only other alternative, but involved additional cost, leaving some families having to choose between affording to go to work, or affording the extra train fare for their kids to go and study.
Shift workers like NHS and hospitality staff, themselves often on low wages, had no choice but to pay for taxis in the absence of buses.
In the snowy weather, when both trains and buses stopped completely, people had to drive in very poor conditions, in some cases taking over three hours to complete a 10-mile trip. Care workers went out of their way to make sure their clients were not left unsupported.
Many of these people work outside the immediate area so there is a wider societal impact, and many are already struggling financially. This further tightening of the thumbscrews, financially and emotionally, has hurt them badly and they are at breaking point.
The road reopens but the damage is done
The road did finally reopen under traffic light control on 24 January, three days earlier than the last estimate, which will no doubt be lauded as a success. Bus routes were reinstated and travel started to seem possible again.
But the damage has been done. Almost every business in Hebden Bridge has tales of greatly reduced turnover, of enormous dents in visitor footfall, additional difficulties in getting to and from work, and delays in getting stock delivered. Some struggle on, others have not survived. A shop selling crystals (well, it is Hebden Bridge) specifically cited The Hole as one of the key reasons they closed down at the end of January.
What has been heartwarming is to see so much social media support and encouragement for local businesses, and the friendly rivalry between Todmorden and Hebden Bridge seems more cordial than ever. There has been dark humour too: an anonymous humourist created ‘The Hole’ as a tourist attraction on Google Maps – it had some great reviews!
Yet much of this was avoidable with better crisis planning and management. Better communications would have made everyone’s life a little more bearable. One of the key frustrations was with the poor management of expectations over how long the works would take. As it was, communications tended to be overly optimistic, leading to regular updates pushing the date further out. The last date (27 January) was released by WY Metro in a letter to students about bus services, before the official council or Yorkshire Water announcement went online.
It’s not a hole – it’s a systematic underinvestment
In some ways, this latest closure has just been the most disruptive of so many upheavals along the A646 in recent years, with near-permanent roadworks somewhere along different sections of the road causing enduring delays. No doubt the works have all been essential but, to those of us living here, they feel uncoordinated and interminable.
Yet this local tale of woe has national implications as an allegory of what happens after decades of underfunding and mismanagement of infrastructure. This was not just another minor roadwork irritant; it was a catastrophic infrastructure failure caused by decades of shortcuts, of treating the symptoms not the cause. The false economy of doing so has been brutally brought home. And the seemingly dismissive approach from the relevant bodies, a lack of any sense of urgency in restoring normality, has ignited the sparks of frustration.
It is not unreasonable to expect is that a major infrastructure issue like this, with all its impacts, is dealt with in an appropriately urgent, serious and coordinated way. On the face of it, Calderdale Council appears to have fallen short of being capable of adequate crisis management across its own departments, or suitably robust engagement with unaccountable private companies. Rightly or wrongly, this helped create an impression of a lack of transparency and veracity. It certainly felt like there was a hesitancy from the impoverished council David in standing up to the private enterprise Goliath.
Another hole? Happy Valley-ntine’s Day
There must surely come a point at which a dedicated crisis management team is engaged, perhaps via an intervention by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. Some residents appealed for the army to be called on or temporary bridges installed – a desperate, inspired resourcefulness that was sadly lacking from official channels.
As well as statutory powers to act, councillors have a duty of care to their constituents, many of whom have felt very let down. This does not excuse the appalling ad hominem attacks that individual councillors have faced online, although it does speak of a prevailing atmosphere of mistrust and hostility.
This time there was also a feeling that a full closure of the road must not be allowed to happen again. Unfortunately, once the specialist new culvert lining arrives from Germany, this section of road will need to be dug up again to install it. And, just in case it was too much of a serotonin rush being able to get the four miles from Todmorden to Hebden Bridge on the same day, another whole road closure has just been announced by Yorkshire Water on 14 February for an unspecified period. Happy Valley-ntine’s Day!
Not very far from The Hole, a damaged sewer in Eastwood needs replacing. Once again Yorkshire Water has promised 24/7 work to complete the job. How long will it actually take? We will be watching.
