A MAJOR drive to make sure the views of residents are heard following the go-ahead for 3,400 new homes by Webheath has borne fruit.
The initiative, by county councillors Robin Lunn and Graham Vickery (both Labour, Redditch North) means that locals, who say their concerns have been ignored by Government planning inspector Michael Hetherington will have a say on how county highways chiefs deal with the huge volume of traffic the development will generate.
“I have always objected to this development because of the key lack of infrastructure and I feel really strongly that residents have not been listened to by the inspector and this meeting will hopefully help redress the balance,” said Coun Lunn.
Worcestershire County Council is currently carrying out a consultation on its proposed Local Transport Plan No4 but until the intervention of councillors Lunn and Vickery no effort had been made to deal with the up to 10,000 more vehicles the new developments is likely to generate.
“The key officers will be at the meeting and the issue will be over where the money developers have to pay towards infrastructure costs is spent.
“Now the planning inspector has made his decision it is important that a coherent plan is put together.”
Highways England have already raised concerns over the volume of traffic hitting the junctions 1 to 3 on the M42 while locally concerns centre on gridlock at the Bromsgrove Highway junction at Foxlydiate and west where it meets the A38, already a notorious bottleneck.
“If we are going to have 10,000 more vehicles on our roads something has to be done,” said David Rose, chairman of the Webheath Action Group who is compiling a dossier of issues. The key issue for him is safety: “If you look at the new development at Long Marston, £30million of infrastructure is going into there – what are the chances of us getting something even remotely similar? We have to make our case,” he said.
The meeting is in the function room of the Foxlydiate pub on Birchfield Road on Thursday, February 23 from 7pm to 9pm all welcome.
