If you were one of the 250 people who attended the recent Arborfield Community Forum meeting where Steve Bailey presented the preferred route for the Aborfield Relief Road, you probably took away from that that the next stage in the process was that the council was going to put the preferred route out for consultation to be refined in preparation for a formal adoption and a formal planning application next year. Indeed if you take a look back at the video and slides from the evening the slide headed Process indicates that the consultation is to “confirm or modify” the preferred scheme, the council only contacted the landowners affected by their preferred scheme not all the shortlist, and the proposal before the Council Executive tonight for the Arborfield Relief Road, and for the North Wokingham Distributor road was that the Executive “approve the recommended scheme for multi-level public consultation”.
However tonight after Cllr Keith Baker repeatedly told the Executive and the members of the public attending that all the proposed routes were to be put forward for consultation, and indeed when expressly challenged by Anthony Lewis, Cllr Baker explicitly stated that exhibition boards would show all the possible routes not just the technical recommendation, and subsequently to Cllr Gary Cowan that all landowners on all routes would be contacted. He also asserted that this had always been the intention. Council leader Cllr David Lee thankfully proposed a change to the proposal before the executive for both the Arborfield and North Wokingham roads to ensure that the Executive approved putting all routes out to consultation as Cllr Baker had repeatedly said was the intention.
Firstly we’d like to thank Cllr Lee for ensuring that the motion before the executive proposed consulting on all the considered routes. We’d also like to highlight that if, as Cllr Baker repeatedly said tonight the intention was always to consult on all the routes this wasn’t made very clear at the community forum meeting, certainly the majority of the people at the meeting including the Parish Council believed that only one route was going to be put out to consultation.
Looking at wider issues, the proposed route also raised concerns from the local councillor in Winnersh that the additional leg of the route across Lockey Farm would encourage increased traffic towards Winnersh Crossroads a significant issue given that the Winnersh relief road is currently stalled. Other information that came out at the meeting is that Hampshire County Council have apparently dropped their judicial review, although it also appears that they are also lacking the funds to be able to finance their part of any Eversley bypass. Whilst the Thames Valley Local Enterprise Partnership could still provide some funds for a wider A327 corridor scheme, it seems funding available through that avenue is also now less than previously expected.
For those members concerned about the proposals on Barkham Bridge and at California Crossroads, Cllr Stanton did highlight these as areas of concern during the Arborfield discussion.
We continue to highlight the importance of suitable traffic schemes in order to mitigate the significant effect of building 3,500 houses in a semi-rural area, with poor public transport and significant existing bottlenecks. As part of these we believe that an Arborfield Relief Road is necessary, as is a scheme to deal with the issues on Eversley Street, however it is important that those proposals meet the needs of not only the new residents within the SDL, but those in the villages of Arborfield and Eversley.
Thank you once again to all those people who put in questions to the Executive tonight, as both Cllr Baker and Cllr Lee highlighted they welcome participation from local residents in the consultations and through public questions at the Executive. We’d also like to thank Cllr Lee for rearranging the agenda to ensure that the large number of Arborfield residents who attended didn’t have to sit through the other discussions.
