November 2006: New consultant's report pans NDR; EDP support for NDR weakening?
A new report from independent transport consultant Denvil Coombe has condemned Norfolk County Council's failure to consult the public on their preferred three-quarter route and highlighted that their purpose for the road is to create development, not to relieve traffic congestion, as they've previously claimed.  It's also highlighted a whole catalogue of flaws in their traffic modelling and suggests that their predicted 1.5% increase in traffic as a result of building an NDR is a substantial underestimate.

In the meantime, the Eastern Daily Press, normally only too willing to print what Norfolk Council tells them without checking its accuracy properly (see below), may be showing some small sign of a weakening in its enthusiasm for the road, printing this item on the consultant's report.  Not, admittedly a very big or detailed article, compared with its previous pro-road cheerleading efforts, but I can't help wondering if it's the first sign that they're realising there's a real possibility that this road may not get built after all - you know how newspapers like to make sure they're on the winning side (or at least, not on the losing one).

Full press release, with more detail than the EDP article, is here.

Full consultant's report is here.

July 2006: Gunson in denial


The East of England Plan Examination Panel Recommendation R5.4 amended the Plan thus: "Delete Policies NSR1-6."  Policy NSR5 included the Northern Distributor Road.  It was mentioned in no other policy of the Plan and the remainder of the Panel's recommendation makes no mention of it.

And here is Mr. Gunson's (Norfolk County Council's Cabinet member for Planning and Transportation's) take on this "The fact that there is no specific reference to the NDR in the suggested policies within the Panel report does not necessarily reflect a lack of support for the scheme." (July 19th, response to question from Denise Carlo, Norfolk & Norwich Transport Action Group).

No?  What does it reflect then?  If the Panel wanted their report to support the NDR wouldn't you think this would entail mentioning it somewhere?  A lack of support seems to follow as a clear and inescapable conclusion from a lack of a mention, and is emphasised by the fact that the NDR was actively removed from the document.  But it seems Mr. Gunson is following a logic all of his own.  Just wish he wasn't doing it at our expense.  Along with the promulgation in the local press of the falsehood highlighted above.  Oh, what a tangled web we weave...


June 2006: NDR thrown out of East of England Plan
The report is out from the Panel of the East of England Plan Examination in Public and we're pleased to report that they've recommended the Norwich Northern Distributor Road be dropped from the plan.  A key reason was lack of consultation, raised at the Examination by groups participating in the No N25 campaign.  This is really tremendous news, being a real blow to Norfolk County Council's chances of building the road.  It will now not be regional policy to build the road even though the unelected regional assembly wanted it to be and asked on this basis for the Government to fund it.  The Examination Panel's recommendations still have to be approved by the Secretary of State, but we are optimistic about this as it's been clear for some time that the Government's own Office for the East of England are highly sceptical about the road.  So far, Norfolk Council have been unusually quiet on the issue.  We await with interest the minutes of their next Planning and Transportation meeting...

At present, the road remains in the Local Transport Plan.  We hope this latest news will provide a lever to help get it out of that too.  And as far as the regional plan goes, there does remain one small fly in the ointment - the Panel has, in its comments, suggested that the road be considered among options to be brought forward in the future.  So there's still work for us to do, but our chances of success just took a considerable turn for the better.

Transport 2000 commentary on the East of England Plan Panel's recommendations


Norfolk Council to be forced to consult on three-quarter route
It looks like Norfolk Council's going to have to think again about their refusal to put out their preferred route to consultation.  Time and again they've trotted out the absurdity that the three quarter route they've chosen is not significantly different from the full routes they consulted on before.  Try telling that to anyone who lives in Taverham, where the three quarter route would disgorge all its traffic.  Well, the good news is we've had a letter from the Government Office for the East of England in response to our protest to them about decisions being taken before the East of England Plan Examination in Public (see below) had looked at the road, which advises that they "...expect the Council to have carried out a full public consultation on the preferred route ..." before they submit an application for funding.  And if the Gov't Office "expects", there ain't no way they're gonna get away with not doing it.  Wiith the realisation dawning on the population of the Norwich area that the road is not about about reducing traffic congestion, but enabling development on a massive scale, I've a feeling they may find rather less enthusiasm for their road this time around.


NDR trashed at East of England Plan Examination in Public, December 15th
This was the day for discussion of the "Norwich Sub-Region Strategy", including the NDR.  We had another demo outside, then went in to hear groups including the Norwich & Norfolk Transport Action Group, Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England make the case against the NDR.  Perhaps most surprising was the number of other unexpected quarters from which representations pointing out how shaky the case for a road is came - consultants, developers and an ex-Director of Transport for Norfolk County Council!  And the number one reason given was the unsustainability of the urban sprawl that the road is designed to facilitate.  If the Examination Panel leave it in the Plan now it could only possibly be because they've been got at in some way.  Fingers crossed the dark influence of Norfolk Council's spin doctors doesn't extend this far...




Route decision (of sorts): Blue route in the east, red in the north, brown, or, well,... um,... maybe nothing in the west.  Do we detect signs of desperation?  You bet!
Well, in case anyone's not heard yet, we have a route decision.  Sort of....  On Tuesday 30th August the Council's planning officers produced their recommendations for a route.  There's still a series of meetings to take place to ratify the decision, but it's pretty much unheard of for the councillors not to go with the recommendations of their officers on something like this.  So you can take it that the route they've announced is the route they'll be putting forward.  Except that, unusually, the officers have left the politicians with some work still to do...

Starting at the eastern end of the road , the decision is clear.  They're going for the blue route.  This is the outermost of the three eastern options.  Then from the Cromer Road (A140) round to the Fakenham Road (A1067) they're going with the red route.  OK, but only as far as the Fakenham Road?  Yep, because west of that the Council is in real trouble.  English Nature and the Environment Agency, whose approval they desperately need, are still refusing to agree to any of their routes.  So the poor planning officers have been in a bit of a cleft stick.  There isn't any available route that they can recommend that will satisfy their political masters' ambitions.  Faced with this dilemma, they've decided they simply can't make a final choice.  So their recommendation is this:  from the Fakenham Road round to the Southern Bypass (A47) in the west we should have either the brown route or... wait for it... nothing!  Well, not quite nothing.  Rather some vague allusions to "enhancements" of existing roads (that should be enough to strike fear into villagers across a wide swathe of countryside!).  So it looks like it's going to be up to the politicians to decide which of these suits their purposes best.

Of course, their purpose, for the moment, is to try to keep the road in the East of England Plan, up for Examination in Public starting in November.  This is really crucial to whether they will get the go-ahead for their road.  If it's thrown out then the game's up.  And its position in the plan is already pretty tenuous.  There have been a whole lot of objections raised to its inclusion, including from the Government Office for the East of England, so there's no way it's going to escape the spotlight at the Examination.

 Your webmaster's speculation about what's happening is this:  If they go into the Examination in Public with only three quarters of a road, they're going to look pretty silly.  The traffic chaos that would be caused  by a dual carriageway that just comes to a halt with nothing to disperse the traffic from it must be obvious, even to the most enthusiastic supporter of the road (we hear there are some).  And it would be pretty clear that there was no way the road would offer even the short term benefits that the Council has promoted in terms of shortened journey times.  If they went into the Examination in Public in this state, surely they would be laughed out.  Doubtless even they realise this.  What they will want to do is go in with one of their consultation routes intact.  This now means the brown route.

So the aim of the decision so far is probably this:  Because the final decision is now delayed until the politicians have their meetings, it gives them a bit more time to try to work on English Nature and the Environment Agency.  It's unlikely that they'll come round, but the Council won't have wanted to close the door on the possibility.  Also, the brown route has on it one of the strongest local campaigns against the road.  So as long as the possibility of a "no western end" option is being held out, the Council probably think they've delayed any intensification of that (we think they're probably wrong about this).  Also, the final ratification of the decision will be at a full Council meeting on September 26th.  And that goes for whatever decision may be made between the "brown" or "nothing" options as well.  Which, we are advised, is the day before the deadline for submissions to the East of England Plan Examination in Public.  Dirty play indeed.

It's not all gloom and doom though.  Quite the contrary.  The No N25 Campaign was quite buoyed up by the decision, which looks more encouraging than anything we expected.  The main thing to notice is that it displays clear signs of panic.  The Council is in trouble, they know they are, and they're wriggling desperately to find a way out, which so far is just not revealing itself.  And they've also been forced into looking at one of the most expensive routes, making it significantly less likely that they'll be able to get the funding they need.

Also, the routes they have chosen, the blue and the brown, go through two of the villages with the strongest local campaigns - Rackheath in the east and Weston Longville in the west.  No doubt the residents of those places are feeling anything but buoyed up right now, and they may rest assured that we have no lack of sympathy for their position.  If there were any doubts about the commonality of our cause with theirs prior to this announcement, there should be none now.  But equally there should be no doubt that the sprawling development that the road threatens (indeed, aims!) to unleash is still just as much a threat to other surrounding villages and countryside as it ever was.  We're planning a public meeting (details to be posted here when available) for October 7th to further consolidate the opposition to the road, and we'd encourage anyone who'd like to resist this development to come along.

Click here for Press Release


Desperate County Councillors organise rural jolly for Environmental bodies:  English Nature and the Environment Agency appear to be digging their heels in over their objection to the road passing through the Wensum Valley.  Norfolk CC need to get them to agree to something before the East of England Plan Examination in Public in September [Latest::Deferred until November 1st.] or there's a serious possibility the NDR might get thrown out of the plan.  Recently, in their desperation they have taken  representatives of EN and EA on a coach trip to look at the most circuitous routes they've put forward, which pass across the top of the valley instead of right through the middle, in hopes of convincing them that this would be OK.  How convincing they've been we don't yet know, but it's excellent news as it means they are being forced to consider the most expensive routes for the road, reducing the likelihood of their obtaining sufficient funding.  Excellent news, that is, for everyone except the village of Weston Longville, through which these routes pass...

NDR featured in endangered landscapes exhibition:  A photograph of the countryside threatened by the proposal to build an NDR is on show in the national Roadblock campaign's "Landscapes Under Threat" exhibition, being run to coincide with the "A Picture of Britain" exhibition at Tate Britain.  The online exhibition aims to highlight the damage expected to the picture of Britain by the recent efforts to revive discredited road building schemes across the UK.

Lib-Dem Councillor comes out against the road.  We've known for some time that a substantial number of Lib-Dems are unhappy with their party's policy of support for the road.  Well at a meeting on 28th May 2005 Norwich City Councillor Andrew Aalders-Dunthorne (Lib-Dem, Wensum) came out and publicly declared his opposition to the road and his party's policy.  This is a significant shift of position given that in January (see City Hall Demo report) he was voting in favour of the road when some others of his party could not bring themselves to do so.  We congratulate Cllr. A-D on his new-found willingness to put reason ahead of party politics and hope that he will encourage his colleagues to join him in voting against the road in the City Council in the future.  A decision from the City to oppose the road would be a major contribution to resisting the County Council's plans.

Norfolk CC have postponed their decision on a route for the NDR, which was to have been taken on March 7th, owing to concerns raised with them by English Nature and the Environment Agency.  Postponement now appears to be about 4-6 months.

The East of England Regional Assembly's consultation on the East of England Regional Plan, also known as the Regional Spatial Strategy, or RSS14, is now closed.  Norfolk County Council successfully pressured them to add the NDR to the plan as a late inclusion.  The Government (the big one, in London) is clearly not too impressed with it.  Their Office for the East of England has sent in replies to the consultation and posted them on their web site.  What they have to say on the NDR is:

The RTS and draft policy NSR5 also propose construction of a Norwich Northern Distributor road to improve access to the airport and development to the north of the city.  It will be necessary to examine:
·         the environmental impacts,
·        the realism of the cost assessments, and
·        to what extent jobs, housing and air traffic growth at Norwich might be constrained or need to be redistributed if this road proposal were not to be included in the RTS.

Well, points 1 and 2 encompass most of the main reasons why we've been objecting to it (which isn't to say we haven't got plenty of other good ones, eg. community severance), so this looks fairly encouraging.  Although how point 3's implication that the road's contribution to air traffic growth is a good thing is reconcilable with an apparent concern about environmental impacts is beyond me.


Actions
Demo, City Hall, Tuesday 25th January 2005
Nice to have something to support, instead of oppose, for a change.  This was a motion to Norwich City Council, against the NDR, from Cllr. Read (Green).  The City Council had previously decided to support the principle of the road providing the County allocated enough money to improving public transport, and providing "such a road is used as a mechanism for improving alternatives to the car.”  A bit like a smack in the mouth is a mechanism for easing pain then...!?  Well, anyway, clearly these criteria aren't being met - you don't ensure enough money for public transport by spending more than you can reasonably afford on a road and that second criterion is just plain daft.  So on that basis, as well as environmental damage and cost to the council tax payer, Cllr. Read was proposing that the City now reject the road.  His motion was defeated, of course.  This is politics, after all, and it's clearly more important to vote against ideas from other political parties than it is to show you still have some grip on reality.  Well, not to worry - they left the door open to review their position again at a later date and they have been known to eventually come to their senses in respect of an earlier roadbuilding scheme, so it could happen yet.  In the meantime this did at least give us the chance to raise the profile of the campaign a bit more, with coverage from BBC Look East, Anglia News and the EDP.  Here are a few of my own pics.

Nicked jackets against the road	Cllr. Ramsay supports the motion and goes for the sympathy vote
Norwich CC were kind enough to let us come and protest in the warm.  Nice cable reel table!	Hardy Norwich citizens and councillors brave the onslaught of cliches

Critical Mass, County Hall, Monday 22nd November 2004
A Critical Mass demo against the road took place outside County Hall on the morning of Monday 22nd November to coincide with Norfolk CC's Cabinet meeting about the road.  We think it was pretty successful, delaying traffic just long enough to make our point without causing anyone to get too angry (except those who are just always angry anyway - not much you can do about them!).  Thanks to everyone who turned out!

We also had a demo on the Drayton Road where the proposed green route crosses on 13th Nov.  Just a small affair, but an encouraging positive response from both locals and passing motorists.  Somebody took a couple of snaps, but I don't know what's happened to them..


A highly simplified summary of the consultation results was presented to the Planning & Transport committee of Norfolk CC on May 27th 2004.  Not keen to let the occasion of the Director of Planning and Transportation's jolly little slide show go unmarked we had a bit of a demo at County Hall for it.  Here's a picture.


We also asked a question at public question time about the council's plans to examine the expected carbon emissions impact of the road (something they'd neglected to even mention up until then), which was sort of half answered.  We do now know that the council's chief consultants in such matters will be Mott MacDonald - a dodgy multinational outfit with interests in the oil industry, who were consultant engineers for the infamously destructive roads at Twyford Down and Newbury, and the notoriously corrupt Pergau Dam project in Malaysia.  They're also responsible for the proposals for a road to trash the World Heritage Site at Stonehenge.  They give their local address as
Moore House
75 Prince of Wales Road
Norwich
NR1 1DG
tel. 01603 767530
fax 01603 767463
e-mail mm_norwich@lineone.net
If you're passing, maybe you could nip in and put in a word for the Wensum Valley with them.

In the meantime, if you're the sort to put pen to paper, or send an e-mail, we'd encourage you to contact your own county councillor to press for a full release to the public of the consultation results, rather than just the summary we've had so far, ie. a proper breakdown of the results by geographical area and the original returns to be made a matter of public record so Norfolk CC can't get away with any porkies or further slight of hand.  Please ask for them to make the release well in advance of any decisions on the NDR.  At the moment they've notably failed to give any assurance that they're going to do this.  If you completed the consultation questionnaire and included comments questioning the need for the NDR, or suggesting alternatives, ask them for feedback on your comments.  Don't give them the chance to ignore you.

Councillors' contact details:  http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/council/councillors/default.asp