Thornton to Switch Island Link
Government announcements
As reported in the local press, the new Government is carrying
out a review of all its current and proposed spending, including
the transport major schemes programme. There seems little doubt
that there will be substantial cutbacks in the overall programme,
but the Department for Transport has not made any decisions about
which schemes will continue to receive funding support. The
Thornton to Switch Island Link scheme is included in this review
and we do not expect to hear whether the Government will continue
to support the scheme until autumn 2010 at the earliest.
Planning Application
In the meantime, the Council's Cabinet has agreed that the
planning application for the scheme should still be submitted so
that if a positive decision is received from the DfT, the Council
will be able to respond quickly and resume progress on the scheme.
The application is expected to be submitted at the end of June or
early July. Details of the application and the associated documents
will be available on the website once they have been
submitted.
Public Consultation February 2010
The Thornton to Switch Island Link project team gave people
the chance to see the proposals before they were finalised for the
planning application so a public consultation was held in February
2010. A consultation newsletter was distributed and public
exhibitions about the scheme were held. More than 400 people
attended the exhibitions on the 2nd and
3rd of February.
A computer generated visualisation of the route was
prepared for the public exhibitions and this can now be viewed
on-line.
The newsletter is still available to download here for
information.
(file size 2.03MB)
The proposed alignment of the link road is also available
below.
(file size 3.3MB)
Autumn and Winter 2009
The main areas of work for the project team throughout
2009 and into 2010 were to undertake further surveys, develop
the engineering design for the scheme, prepare the planning
application and environmental impact assessment, to review and
update the traffic model and to identify the land requirements
for the proposed link road.
A series of surveys took place in the late summer and
early autumn to collect information that was needed for the
detailed design of the new road and for the environmental
assessment.
The project team also held discussions with key
stakeholders such as the Environment Agency and the Highways Agency
about their concerns and requirements, which informed the
environmental assessment and the scheme design.
A
detailed scoping report for the environmental
assessment was completed and was provided to the key
stakeholders.
Last Updated on 6/11/2010