CPRE Shropshire
Protecting Shropshire

Home

News

Campaigns & Issues

Events & Debates

Support CPRE

About CPRE Shropshire

Search CPRE

CPRE Oswestry

CPRE West Midlands

CPRE National Website

Sign up for our National Campaigns Update

Join CPRE or donate

Press Release on behalf of the No Way! Group: 18 May 2009

Early next month, the government will decide whether to fund the £85 million North West Relief Road for Shrewsbury [1]. The No Way! Group [2] is calling on the government to reject an application for funding for the scheme.

Dr Katy Anderson for CPRE and No Way! [3] says: "This road is both destructive and unnecessary. Even during the rush hour, the North West Relief Road will only save ten minutes for people driving across the town. For the sake of ten minutes, even less at other times, this road will carve a destructive swathe through valuable and unique landscapes. CPRE and the No Way! Group are saying to the government that there is no way this damaging and out-of-date scheme should be funded."

The road is unnecessary because traffic congestion in Shrewsbury is reducing. The number of cars entering the town centre has fallen by 21% since 1997/8. [4] Shropshire Council is also committed to tackling climate change and should be planning to reduce travel by car, not building new roads. [5]

Katy continues. "The proposed road will cut through and destroy some of the most valuable landscapes and wildlife habitats on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. The effects on wildlife will be severe, and noise and atmospheric pollution will swamp tranquil fields and damage protected wildlife sites."

If the road is built, it will carve up a large area of the glacial landscape of wetlands and pools north of the town, one of Shrewsbury's most distinctive landscapes. Two Sites of Special Scientific Interest and four Wildlife Sites are threatened, along with a Ramsar Site (wetland of European importance) at Hencott Pool, which has a rich flora of fen plants including several rare sedges, cowbane and greater spearwort. [6]

Katy continues "Shropshire's planners seem stuck in the twentieth century, believing that traffic can only be managed by building more roads whatever the environmental cost. They are wrong. Planners should be spending the £85 million on reducing car use, and promoting walking, cycling and public transport. This way we will be able to get people across the town efficiently, while protecting Shrewsbury's precious landscapes and avoid adding to the carbon burden on the planet." [7]

Katy concludes "We are calling on all those who object to this harmful road to write to the Minister for Transport asking him to reject funding for the road. It is time to say "no way" to this unnecessary and destructive road." [8]

Notes

[1] The West Midlands Regional Assembly has submitted Shropshire Council's proposal to the Department of Transport for £100 million from the Regional Funding Allocation to fund to the North West Relief Road. A decision will be made early in beginning of June.

[2] The No Way! Group is a coalition including Shropshire Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Shrewsbury Friends of the Earth, Mid and North Shropshire Green Party, HCF Residents Group and the Mount Residents Group.

[3] Katy Anderson is the Transport Member of the Executive Committee of CPRE Shropshire. CPRE Shropshire has been campaigning to protect Shropshire's countryside for sixty years and has 500 members in the county. It is part of the national CPRE charity which has 60,000 supporters. Our website is cpreshropshire.org.uk.

[4] See graph. Source: Shropshire Local Development Framework Core Strategy, Transport and Accessibility Topic Paper, July 2008.

Click for larger image

[5] Figures provided by Shropshire County Council show an estimated rise in CO2 emissions from road traffic in the town of 13% if the scheme is built. This is contrary to local and national commitments to reduce carbon emissions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer committed the UK to cut its carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 in his budget on 22 April 2009. Shropshire’s carbon emissions amounted to about 2.7 million tonnes in 2006, over a third of which was from road transport, with the highest overall level of emissions around Shrewsbury.

[6] Alkmond Park Pool has abundant aquatic species including water lilies, some rare sedges and a fringe of surrounding carr woodland. It has survived until now, relatively undisturbed and unpolluted. While these sites are not directly threatened with destruction, the impact of the road would lead to a fragmented landscape and inevitably, pollution. Engineering proposals in very close proximity to the pools would also have serious hydrological implications for these ancient wetlands. The Old River Bed, a former meander of the Severn, cut off some 5,000 years ago, would be destroyed under current proposals, obliterating a fascinating piece of history along with its watery vegetation of rushes, sedges and meadowsweet. The huge volume of traffic such a road would carry would inevitably bring pollution problems to the River Severn, with consequences for creatures such as kingfisher, otter, Daubenton's bats and Atlantic salmon, currently thriving along the river.

[7] Shropshire Council's predecessors have done a lot of good work on transport in Shrewsbury which is already showing benefits in reduced traffic and increased cycling, walking and bus use. The No Way! Group supports these schemes and think that they should be continued and expanded. We particularly welcome the cycling demonstration town successful bid. In particular we would like to see:

• Individual sustainable travel planning
• Better promotion of park and ride with improved facilities
• More crossings for pedestrians
• Improvements to the traffic flows around Chester St.
• Better public transport between the north and south of the town
• Fewer parking spaces in the town centre
• Signing and education to steer through drivers away from the town centre.

Shropshire Council's draft Strategic Objective for transport supports this approach and states:

"Strategic Objective 7. Support the improvement of Shropshire’s transport system in a sustainable and integrated way and locate development to improve accessibility by public transport, cycling and walking, help reduce car dependency and the impact of traffic on local communities and the environment." Issues and Options Statement, January 2009.

[8] The No Way! Group are asking all those that object to the road to write to Lord Andrew Adonis, Minister of State for Transport stating their opposition by 29 May 2009Address: Lord Andrew Adonis, Minister of State for Transport, Department for Transport, Great Minster House, 76 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DR. Email: andrew.adonis@dft.gsi.gov.uk.

Further Information

• More on the No Way! campaign against the NWRR