Topic: £150m for road improvements.

[Michael]

Wiltshire Council press statement announcing £150m for road improvements, but nothing for Westbury until 2025. Melksham and Chippenham to get the money for further bypass improvements.
How long are we going to accept this, time for direct action now?

[Shizzy]

I really can't see how Chippenham is more deserving, it already has a bypass

[baldy]

I explained the funding pathway for a Westbury A350 bypass here:  https://www.westburytownforums.co.uk/index.php/topic,5038.0.html

Essentially, confirmation of funding for the Melksham eastern bypass means that the Westbury Bypasss project can restart in 2022.  This would mean the essential preparation and design work which would include a re-analysis of all the feasible routes to find the most appropriate route that can be given planning permission and funded would start in 2022. This is so that a bid for the main money can then be made in 2025. The design stage including consultations will take several years.

The refusal of planning permission for the Westbury Bypass in 2010, made by the then Labour Secretary of State for Transport, was based on planning policies that Labour introduced in the previous few years. This meant that to justify the Westbury Bypass other pinchpoints along the A350 needed to dealt with first.

[Shizzy]

The point Michale is making, and others is that Westbury should be earmarked for funding now (more urgent), and maybe Melksham project can start in 2022. Why is Westbury being pushed down the list when a by-pass is more urgently needed here than in Melksham?

[baldy]

Getting the existing pinch-point done in Melksham first means that the case for a Westbury bypass is strengthened.

The crucial point to remember here is that only 10 years ago hundreds of local morons campaigned against a fully funded Westbury Bypass..

GET IT INTO YOUR HEAD!!!

10 years ago hundreds of local morons campaigned against a fully funded Westbury Bypass.

[Shizzy]

Getting the existing pinch-point done in Melksham first means that the case for a Westbury bypass is strengthened.

I don't think the case for Westbury by-pass needs strengthening, the case is quite clear with or without Beancare being by-passed. You could use that excuse to by-pass every town on the A350 before Westbury.

[baldy]

You need to read the Inspectors Report that followed the public inquiry which dwelt on reasons why the Westbury Bypass was deemed to be unjustified at the time.

Then you need to imagine sitting as a cabinet member at Wiltshire Council deciding on whether to risk £ millions on preparing for a new design and funding bid when you need to be sure that the second attempt will succeed.

The cabinet, very understandably, was shocked by the failure of the local community to resoundingly support the last bypass proposal.

They will not let morons (NIMBYs and national anti-road campaigners) mess it up again.

[Bob DeBilda]

The cabinet, very understandably, was shocked by the failure of the local community to resoundingly support the last bypass proposal.

They will not let morons (NIMBYs and national anti-road campaigners) mess it up again.

Easily shocked then. Although they don't usually let public opinion get in the way of allowing unpopular proposals. If the local community resoundingly didn't support the last bypass proposal, maybe it was for a very good reason?

[baldy]

It was the usual NIMBY crowd but their minority voice was boosted when a huge national campaign group joined in and ran a relentless campaign based on misleading claims.

I still laugh at remembering when an ecological survey was undertaken by an independent expert in some of the thin line of trees or woods that the road would cross by the Wellhead Pumping Station. A dead dormouse was found. Upon examination of its stomach contents, it was found that it had eaten a diet of food that was simply not available in the area. In other words, some moron had actually put the dead dormouse right where they knew the survey would take place.

Another claim was that the road would go right under the White Horse and spoil views of it. This was utter nonsense as at the nearest point, the new road would have been a full
Kilometre away running across a field far below at ground level behind a thick screen of trees or in a cutting.

[Pete]

The crucial point to remember here is that only 10 years ago hundreds of local morons campaigned against a fully funded Westbury Bypass..

I think "hundreds" is an exaggeration, I would say a couple of dozen active local campaigners at most who managed to con some locals into objecting (including a 5yo girl).

Pete

[baldy]

I accept this point.

I should have said hundreds of Objectors who took part in the public consultation during the 2007 planning application by writing objection letters.

I was just treating them all as campaigners in the sense that they took part.

I agree that the organisers of that campaign were no more than about one or two dozen or so.

As you know, there was about 1,100 or so objections of which only about 300 came from the BA13 area. It is this 300 or so NIMBYs that I was talking about.

We know that the rest came from all over the UK and some other countries.

There was also about 1,000 letters of support, almost all of which came from the BA13 area.

Therefore, it is perfectly true to say that local supporters outweighed local objectors by 3 : 1.

I am not a supporter of our current Mayor, whom I regard as incompetent and without any recognisable or useful skills because he talks nonsense about almost anything he turns his mind to. I was particularly sick of his tendency to keep changing internal town council rules and procedures (as chair of a policy and resources committee) instead of actually getting anything of significance achieved for the public when I was a town councillor (2002-2018).   A few months ago, when the area board was discussing the timescale for action on the Westbury Bypass, I reminded everyone about the result of the official consultation during the planning application in 2007 which was 3:1 in favour of support by local residents.

The total A$$ho%e Mayor, Mike Sutton, shouted out "Not true". He was sat next to me. I almost hit him in the face as he was being so rude and literally lying to my face in public. I shouted back "It is true. I was there". He just shook his head.

If he had said anything more to suggest I was wrong, I'd have hit him very hard ...

[baldy]

I've found the correct stats from my archive now.

The following was published in May 2012 in WHN within a letter from me. No-one challenged the figures as at the time everyone taking part knew the figures anyway:

The best measure of opinion about the eastern route occurred during the March 2007 planning application. The ratio of Westbury area (ie. local) opinion was established as 3:1 in favour of the eastern bypass. Total support letters numbered 969, of which 911 were from Westbury (65% were generated from my “Support Westbury Bypass” leaflet which included a large and detailed plan of the route). Total objection letters numbered 1,030 of which only 323 were from Westbury and most were from outside the local area. In other words, most local opinion supported the eastern bypass!