January 2005- Opposition from town council removed. Westbury Town Council has always favoured a western route to the bypass. This is inconvenient for those pushing for the road. So, Westbury Town Councillors who live in the East or South of town are informed that they no longer discuss the Westbury Bypass, let alone vote on the subject. Councillors who live in west or north however, are allowed to freely discuss and vote on the issue. The result is that for the first time, the town council decides that an Eastern bypass is desirable.
May 2005 - Planning application put in County Council just before general election.Three weeks before the general election Wiltshire County Council put in a planning application for the bypass giving the legal minimum of 21 days consultation, despite the very large and complex Environmental Statement. The county hoped that just before an election, that councillors will be busy with other things little attention to the planning application. The county failed to alert the Wildlife Trust of the application but luckily WWT were alerted to the planning documents by one of their members.
November 2005 - Westbury is shown to be a low regional priority and does not initially get funds The South West Regional Assembly have a stakeholder meeting regarding financing of transport infrastructure. The ensuing score sheet for schemes gives the Westbury Bypass only 4 points, meaning that ot will not be funded. The list of schemes to be funded is made available on-line. GOSW (Government Officer of the South West) agree that the Environmental score for Westbury should have been "poor".
December 2005 - hijacking of the regional funding process to move money to rural bypasses including Westbury Wiltshire County Council, Dorset and Devon team up to infiltrate the process for allocating transport money to regional projects, with the aim of getting finaance for three contentious bypasses: Westbury, Kingskerswell and Weymouth. Past large transport project in the South west had favoured Wiltshire in particular, with three "major scheme bids" being funded.
January 27th 2006 - advice goes from region to minister Advice went to the minister from the region without Westbury in the primary list of schemes considered to be regional priority. It was in a Table labelled : Table 2 - Schemes which require further work and/or that require further analysis in relation to profiling of the programme and that could potentially be added to the RFA programme (subject to affordability and deliverability).
April 2006 - West Wilts asks region for as much new development as possible West Wilts District Council and Wiltshire County Council ask the South West Region for as many new houses as possible, suggesting 11,500 new jobs for the Trowbridge Travel to Work area by in the Regional Spatial Strategy, by 2025. It was noted that, whereas other local authorities had prepared public transport strategies to accompany growth, Wiltshire had neglected to do so.
July 2006 - LTP2 consultation fudge. Wiltshire finally complete their second local transport plan (LTP) for submission to the Department for Transport. Whereas the first LTP (of 2000) had to admit that road building was bottom of peoples' list of priorities, the authority made sure that would not happen again, by altering the way consutlation was done. The county wrote a piece of draft explanatory text outlining the County Council’s own broad investment priorities and asked people to comment on it. WCC explains in its LTP2 that "Due to time constraints, only two of the four groups managed to complete this task, both of which raised no objections to the suggested text."Thus the local authority concluded that delivery of Westbury Bypass and the Brunel Link and Harnham Relief Road were in the top prioirty category in stakeholder consultation. In fact even in Westbury, the bypass was not high in the list of peoples' concerns.
WCC do admit that it was pointed out by consultees that LTP1 Major Schemes have no relevance in the prioritisation of Integrated Transport Block spending.
October 2006 Bath and North East Somerset vote to send their through HGV traffic on the A36-A46 through West Wiltshire on the A350. The alarm is sounded by communities on the A361 who would face even more lorries cutting East-West across the county, and by communities on the A350 including Beanacre, Melksham, Yarnbrook. WCC say "Wiltshire County Council will object to these proposals (the lorry management scheme) until traffic management and environmental improvements along the A350 route, and in particular the A350 Westbury By-pass, have been implemented in order to mitigate the diversion of lorries from the A36 through Bath" WCC neglect to make the case for bypasses at Yarnbrook, West Ashton, Beanacre of Melksham, or comment on the load of HGVs along the A361.
October 2006 - regional transport discussions go underground. The region decides to look again at schemes for regional funding, to give further advice to the Minister. To avoid unsettling anyone, the "refresh process" is done by a ‘Technical Panel’ comprising Environment Directors from Local Authorities and GOSW, RDA and Highways Agency. This all went on behind closed doors, without any stakeholder consultation because had that happened, the usefulness of Table 2 schemes to the region in promoting the RSS would have been questioned. The result is that all schemes get through, and all the schemes in Table 2 are promoted to Table 1. When questioned by ACA in their letter to the regional assembly it turns out that environmental impact and value for money a very minimal part of the refresh process, and that specifically no stakeholder input was wanted (see reply.
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