Last time the road was on the cards I was allowed to see the minutes. This time the project leader’s files are in such a mess that apparently it will take 40 hours to find the meeting minutes.
I have offered to pop in to help with the filing but my very kind gesture has been ignored. So, the LibDems are in charge of a £300 million project yet the relevant documents seem to be in a big heap somewhere.
Dearie me, oh dearie me! LibDem incompetence yet again.
According to the excellent Mr John Tyers:-
“85,000 SEMMMS leaflets were sent out. The population of Stockport is 283,000. If you send questionnaires to the 30 per cent of the borough – such as Bramhall and Cheadle – where car ownership is very high, voters will tend to want their money spent on roads. If you go, however, to the poorer districts you would expect a very different result. Ten years ago 250,000 leaflets were distributed and three per cent of them were returned in favour of building the road. This time around we have no meaningful result. We have simply wasted public money.”
Email sent 4/8/13 at 14.16 to Councillor Roberts and h.bernstein@manchester.gov.uk; Jon.Lamonte@tfgm.com; j.bowles@manchester.gov.uk; r.paver@manchester.gov.uk; steve.warrener@tfgm.com
This document can be more easily read at:-http://www.sheilaoliver.org/m56-to-a6-bypass.html
Dear Councillor Roberts
Many thanks for the reply attached re public question time 16th July 2013 with information on the A6 – Airport Scheme – £260m and thank you for your references on the components, namely the financial case and appendices E, G and O; I would have welcomed a more enthusiastic response including perhaps a thumbnail sketch of each component and your commentary.
Your response to the question – why NPS Stockport were appointed to work on the scheme – seems to depend entirely on NPS being a going concern. Have you not taken account of the fact that NPS is only a “going concern” on the condition that guarantees of support exist from the Norse Group? These have to be renewed annually and without them legal barriers to continuing to trade would almost certainly come into force, so the answer to the question “going concern” must be a guarded Yes and No. The auditors have found it necessary to quote the (limited) guarantee before issuing their certificate.
I have noted that the project has required their services.
Finally, we must not forget that the company’s value as a stand alone entity is NIL unless a new owner was willing to absorb it or guarantee its “going concern” status.
I look forward with interest to your response, which I shall post up on my website and blog. I shall inform all relevant parties of this potential problem. Let no-one subsequently try to claim they were unaware of the true situation. We certainly don’t want incompetence and legal wrangling to push up the costs of this unnecessary roadscheme even further. I am still shocked at the £750,000 cost of the “consultation” exercise with a very paltry response rate.
Kind regards
Sheila
They are building this road to facilitiate journeys from over 15km to the airport. It is actually going to make traffic in many roads in the Borough far worse. Why are they proceeding with this expensive lunacy? LibDems! – Unaccountable and downright iffy.
Only 4,500 people responded – that second stage of the A6 to Airport Road consultation
consultation was to cost £320,000!
http://www.manchesterfoe.org.uk/email-action-semmms-road/
“The A6 to Manchester Airport Relief Road is a proposed new road, connecting the A6 at Hazel Grove to Manchester Airport. It consists of the northern part of what was originally called the Poynton Bypass and the A555 Manchester Airport Eastern and Western Link Roads and it ties in with a section of the A555 that was built some years ago. This six mile road, which is one of the SEMMMS (South East Manchester Multi-Modal Study) network of roads, has an estimated cost of £300 million (likely to increase) and will – according to the promoting Councils’ own reports – see a likely 21% increase in traffic at certain areas.
Roads to Nowhere. We know that building new roads does not solve people’s transport problems. Instead, road-building generates new traffic movements that did not previously exist, damages the countryside, adds to climate change and makes cities, towns and villages less pleasant places to live for everyone. That is why Manchester Friends of the Earth is working with Campaign for Better Transport on their Roads to Nowhere campaign.
Why we are opposing this proposal. The Campaign for Better Transport (CfBT) and North West Transport Roundtable (NW TAR) commissioned transport experts to examine the business case, and traffic models for the proposed road and other professionals to critique the environmental scoping study and the approach to air quality and climate change. This report highlighted how the proposed road scheme will have a wide range of detrimental environmental, economic and social impacts effects. See the ‘A folly in the making – SEMMMS A6-Manchester Airport Relief Road‘ report.
We’re calling for greener, cheaper alternatives to road-building…
Manchester Friends of the Earth does not support the proposed A6-MARR and we believe that the scheme will not achieve the economic and transport benefits claimed for the scheme. We submitted a detailed response to the first consultation phase, which closed on 25th January 2013. We will be responding to the second consultation (deadline 19th July 2013) and will be objecting to the planning application (likely to be in the Autumn 2013).
The evidence from the UK and other countries clearly demonstrates that investing the £300 million in public transport and active travel schemes would deliver far greater benefits for the local economy, achieve healthier communities and help reach our legally required air quality and climate change targets”
“The adverse effects on health of particulate matter (PM) are especially well documented. There is no evidence of a safe level of exposure or a threshold below which no adverse health effects occur.”
From 3 days ago.
“….on the health risks, it’s very very clear – especially for particulates – that there’s no healthy exposure level and also that the EU limits are higher than they should be to protect health adequately, so anything the road causes on top of these is pretty much guaranteed to be harmful to people exposed.”
Still, it might win the LibDems a few votes, so that’s all right then!
-The Directive has provision for additional protection of children and other groups vulnerable groups (were the Queensgate parents made aware of this?)
-The EU may halve the PM2.5 limits this year in the light of more recent research,
– The EU may be putting pressure on the UK to gets it act together but the UN is also chasing the EU to improve air quality,
– SEMMMS has just published predicted NO2 for 2017 along the corridor. Large areas exceed 40 u grams and because of the proximity of rights of way there are extensive breaches of the Directive.
