Yesterday, while many of us were either taking part in Big Garden Birdwatch or out and about enjoying the sunshine, road protesters were digging in at Hastings. They are making a stand against the planned Bexhill Hastings Relief Road through Combe Haven valley.
National and local Government are planning to spend more than £30bn on 190 major road schemes. The fear is that the twenty first Battle of Hastings is just the start of clashes between local people and developers. We don't want to go back to the 1990s when sites like Twyford Down and Newbury became totemic environmental battlegrounds.
This is why, yesterday, heads of Greenpeace, Campaign for Better Transport, Friends of the Earth, The Wildlife Trusts, senior campaigner from CPRE and RSPB South East Regional Director, Chris Corrigan went to see first-hand the area threatened by the planned road and the impact contractors works have already caused. It was an opportunity to meet protesters and highlight the impacts and threats from the Government's forthcoming roads strategy. The Hastings scheme costs £86m yet the Department of Transport’s own cost benefit analysis questions the value for money, even without counting the impact on nature. Poorly designed road schemes not only fragment habitats but can lock us into high carbon future. This comes at a time when government says it wants to restore wildlife and decarbonise the economy.
While I, of course, recognise the political imperative of kick-starting the economy and renewing infrastructure, we must look for a new model of growth. Growth that erodes our natural assets damages local communities and robs the next generation of nature's free services. And certainly does not help the UK's commitment to "protect wildlife and... restore biodiversity".
This government, like many before it, will be judged on how it spends its money. A new generation of bad road schemes is the not the legacy any government should want.
Tomorrow, I focus on other big public spending tests: the future of the Forestry Commission, Natural England and Environment Agency, the EU Budget, and what's happening to local authority funding.
Very best of luck to these protesters. They do a great job. I often drive on the M3/A34 through Twyford Down and the Newbury by pass and each time I do I think what a national disgrace these roads are at these locations. Bad and unsustainable infrastructure decisions like these by Governments stay with us almost for ever. I have a Dutch colleague now living in the UK who has commented to me quite spontaneously a number of times, how unfriendly the design of British roads are, to the landscape and to wildlife, compared to those in say Germany and The Netherlands. I am sure this comment is quite right.
redkite