New £100 million road planned for access to upcoming garden town
It will also serve to link the A133 and 120
Plans for a new £100million road being built to enable a 9,000-home garden community were given the green light yesterday.
The new A133/A120 link road, along with a Rapid Transport System to the east of Colchester, is being funded with £99million of Government money secured by Essex County Council to deliver infrastructure to help support a new garden town of 9,000 homes.
The planned route will leave the A133 via a roundabout east of the University of Essex, cutting across 2.4km of open arable farmland before joining the A120 via a junction east of Bromley Road.
Councillors voted the plans through by a majority of seven.
One local resident, Phil Marshall, pointed out during a council meeting yesterday the “conflicts of interest” at play.
Speaking to councillors yesterday (November 1), he said: “We have Essex County Council highways submitting to Essex County Council which rightly raises the issue of many conflicts of interest.”
Development and regulation committee chair, councillor John Jowers, said in the meeting: “Legally we are the authority that has to determine.
“I can understand you feel this is kind of judging your homework but I can assure you that over 20 years the dispassionate application of judicial process in this council has been formidable.”
The committee agreed to approve the proposals for the new link road, as well as new access routes to Ardleigh South Services and Colchester waste transfer station as well as three new roundabouts at the meeting.
But not without criticism from parish councillors and residents.
Councillor Andrea Luxford-Vaughan, representing Elmstead Parish Council, which had earlier laid out a number of objections to the link road, said: “There is no evidence that it is justified in a regional road capacity.
“It ignores all current reviews on road building and will have a very detrimental effect on wildlife, ancient woodland, cultural heritage air quality and noise and light pollution.”
She added additional concerns over the financing arrangements.
She said: “Currently there are no confirmed costs or timescales – so it is entirely reasonable to assume there are big problems with the delivery of this road.”
A spokesman for Ardleigh South Services said the scheme would make the business “unviable”.
He said: “It denies direct ingress and egress from and to the A120, instead being served by a spur of road between the A133 and A120 for west bound traffic cutting out the dumbbell roundabout.
“The difference between traffic flows between the current arrangement and the post-scheme projects form Essex highways are stark – a 78 per cent reduction in potential customers.”
Phil Robinson of Turnip Lodge Lane, which will be stopped up, said: “The council has not applied adequate mitigation measures to minimise the impact of the proposed impact on this recognised regionally important protected lane.”
Council officer James Davidson said that signs would be installed for the services but the designs were the only way to make the link road safe for motorists.
He said: “We have had working group meetings with Tendring and Colchester to align the designs with the objectives of the garden community.
“The service for Turnip Lodge Lane has been restricted to the eastern end.
“There isn’t a strategy designation and Tendring have acknowledged the effort to restrict the disturbance to the eastern end.
“The scheme does not physically direct traffic onto Elmstead Road but we have acknowledged the indirect impact because road users will have the choice and while the scheme is not generating traffic it is likely to redistribute the existing traffic.
“We have put forward a way of dealing with the issues including closure of the central reserve gap of the A133 to prevent turning collisions and we propose further traffic movement restrictions.”