Letter: The Real Purpose of the New Bridge at Ash Is Obvious

Published on: 26 Sep, 2019
Updated on: 26 Sep, 2019

The proposed route of the new Ash flyover or bridge. Image courtesy GBC.

From: Sue Wyeth-Price

In response to: A Bridge To Benefit Ash, A Vanity Project, Or A Key To More Housing?

As a former chair of the Ash Green Residents’ Association, I have been following this project in as much detail as possible. I think the answer to the question in the headline of David Reading’s Ash Aspect column is more than obvious.

The application documents, for a project entirely commissioned and paid for by the council, spell it out: “Without the proposed development, the delivery of new housing associated with Policy A31 would be contrary to the requirements of the GBLP (the Guildford Borough Local Plan).”

My personal Freedom of Information correspondence with the Housing Infrastructure Fund and with Network Rail (amongst others), and the residents’ rejected Freedom of Information request to GBC, have led me to the opinion that the bridge is there to satisfy the inflated housing “need” regardless of the cost to the public purse.

Local residents have been raising questions with the council on a variety of key topics for well over 18 months now, and many remain unanswered, even after the submission of the planning application. A meeting offered to us on these topics by the council was later cancelled by GBC, who offered another meeting in May to discuss the traffic only.

How can any organisation justifiably contemplate the expenditure of what is most likely to be upwards of £30 million without clearly providing the evidence that it will deliver any benefits? Yet again this week, on Tuesday (September 24), we had the bridge issues added to the Executive Committee at the last minute, giving members of the Executive scant time to absorb the impact of what was to be revealed. Once again, all the papers were kept secret and the public excluded.

In March, the Executive voted to transfer £2.86 million from the provisional to the approved capital programme. On Tuesday they voted a further £600,000 “due to increasing costs associated with the increasing complexity of the scheme”. This is a 22% increase in less than six months. Extrapolating this, assuming that the cost estimate doesn’t increase again, it would give a cost of £27.9 million excluding the cost of the land for which they have already started the compulsory purchase order process and intend to use as a wetland area to deal with the known flooding/drainage issues.

It is understood that GBC was hoping to receive £4.6m from the Local Enterprise Partnership in order to balance the funding shortfall identified earlier this year. But the decision papers from this week’s Executive Committee also state “…the council was able to confirm that there is no LEP funding for this project”.

Also within the original funding equation, a need was identified to impose a “bridge tax” and all recent applications have also been subject to a “bridge tax” of £10,000 per house. However, the planning inspector, when rejecting a recent application, said: “I am concerned that I have seen no evidenced formula for the requirement, giving me concerns that it is an arbitrary amount.” It’s obviously not only the residents that have concerns.

In December, Cllr Nigel Manning [Con, Ash Vale], then lead for Finance, was reported in Surrey Live as saying: “…the council still faces significant funding challenges. We predict a budget gap shortfall for the council of about £8 million in the next four years.”

Of course, we may be wrong, but unless the council actually shares the full and accurate information about the bridge with residents, including any likely impact of any budget cuts to deal with the cash flow situation, how can we expect to make an informed decision?