Letter: Ash Residents Will Continue to Scrutinise GBC’s Actions on the Road Bridge

Published on: 20 Jul, 2024
Updated on: 20 Jul, 2024

Ash road bridge, due for completion in December.

From: John Ferns

Tongham resident

GBC’s response to The Dragon’s report: GBC Denies Misleading Government Agency Over Ash Road Bridge Funding is ambiguous, either accidentally or deliberately.

It says: “GBC continues to seek and collect s106 contributions towards the bridge from developers and remains committed to recycling equivalent sums into the delivery of housing in the borough…”.

But in its March 2023 report to councillors it said: ”The Local Authority accepts its obligation to ensure a sum equal to the recovered funds is to be recycled into future residential housing in the locality.”

Accepting that Ash is part of the borough, GBC is conveniently dodging the unlikelihood of ever receiving s106 contributions, on the scale it needs, from developments in Ash, as the land availability here is now minimal.

Secondly, once the bridge is opened in December, developers will actively challenge GBC’s attempts to levy s106 contributions for the bridge. Why contribute to make a bridge possible if it already exists?

It is noted that GBC has until 2034 to fulfil Homes England’s conditions, by which time all past and present councillors and officers involved in this subterfuge will have moved on… a pattern that continues with monotonous regularity.

And will Ash station ever get its footbridge? We will just have to wait and see. But rest assured Ash residents will continue holding GBC’s feet to the fire on all the missing infrastructure improvements we were supposed to be getting, in exchange for losing all our green space.