CATALOGUE OF ERRORS

Derby City Council has been forced to rewrite a 615-page environmental statement supporting its own planning application for the £35.6m Connecting Derby project. Dozens of errors and omissions have been highlighted by a member of the public who has spent hours going over the Environmental Impact Assessment. The planning application, which has already been hit by delays after protests by residents' action group Derby Heart, involves changes to the Five Lamps junction and the completion of the inner ring road.

Officers within the council's transport and planning departments decided that they had no choice but to rewrite the report. But they did not inform anyone else, including Lucy Care, cabinet member responsible for planning, transportation and environment. The revised report will not be ready for several weeks.

Peter Steer, of Ashbourne Road, Derby, and a member of Derby Heart, which was set up to oppose Connecting Derby, claims to have uncovered at least 70 errors. He said, "We can only put this down to incompetence. If I read a document that is incomplete and inaccurate I begin to doubt everything else within it."

Mr Steer, a self-employed consulting structural engineer, bought the document from the council for £100. He first discovered a 55-page appendix was missing. This detailed archaeological issues relating to the King Street area. "We have since found eight drawings missing, seven more appendices and lots of errors," he said.

Christine Durrant, the council's head of transportation and special projects, said the council had identified 15 typographical errors, eight factual errors and 10 omissions, amounting to 67 pages missing from the report. She said, "We should've picked them up and been more thorough. But the actual conclusions of the report have not changed."

Mrs Care was unaware of the latest problems when the Evening Telegraph contacted her. But she said, "It's encouraging that there are people in Derby with sufficient interest in what's going on to read these documents so carefully." And it's just as well.

Derby City Council has now been made aware of dozens of errors and omissions in its environmental statement which accompanies the latest planning application for the project. It has taken a single member of the public to uncover errors in a report which council officers and consultants have spent thousands of man-hours completing.

The Environmental Impact Assessment for Connecting Derby states the case for the scheme which will see the destruction of homes, businesses and car parks along the proposed final section of the inner ring road and changes to the King Street area and Five Lamps junction.

It describes the likely impact of new road junctions, roundabouts and bus lanes on future traffic flow and volume. It is the document that will be used to justify the planning application for Connecting Derby to the Government, or the Planning Inspectorate should the application be rejected and go to appeal. In short, it matters to every Derby person, and thus it should be accurate.

But Peter Steer has made it his mission to locate errors and omissions in the environmental statement in an effort to derail the project, which he believes will ruin Derby. He claims, for example, that the report contains no mention of changes at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, where services will be removed to the new superhospital. Nor does it mention Derby College's new sixth form centre, which is under construction off St Alkmund's Way. And the planned 721-home urban village at the old Friar Gate Goods Yard is nowhere to be seen.

These, he claims, will have a significant impact on traffic, and the report was lacking without this information. He said the very idea of a planning team suggested a degree of planning went into its brief. But Lucy Care, cabinet member for planning, transport and the environment, said, "We can't anticipate something we haven't seen or that might not go ahead."

Connecting Derby has been plagued by delays and controversy since the scheme gained government approval in 2000. But the idea behind Connecting Derby goes back a lot further. The proposal to build an inner ring road was first mooted in the late 1950s when Traffic Street was built. In January 1969, the first phase of St Alkmund's Way opened and work to link it with Traffic Street began the following year. This phase was completed in 1972.

Two years later, the government approved stage three of the project, to link St Alkmund's Way with Uttoxeter New Road. But in May 1975 the final stretch between London Road and Uttoxeter Road was deferred due to spiralling costs. In 1986 it was revealed that the work may not start until the next century.

The new version of Connecting Derby, which was sold as a transport improvement scheme rather than a road-building scheme, was launched in August 1999. In December 2000 the government approved £22.25m over five years. Work began on Phase One of the new scheme in January 2002 with new traffic signals installed at the junction of Cathedral Road and St Alkmund's Way.

In July 2002 the action group Derby Heart (Heritage and Environmental Association for Residents and Traders) was launched. Its aim was to oppose the council's Connecting Derby plans. In October 2002, the one-way system in the Strand was reversed, while Walker Lane, Jury Street and Bold Lane were opened to two-way traffic.

In November 2002, Victoria Street and Albert Street were closed to traffic except for buses, taxis and bicycles. Work to enhance the look of Albert Street and Victoria Street began in February 2003. But in June 2003, Derby Heart's opposition was starting to take effect. The council was forced to withdraw its own planning application for work in the Ford Street area (Phase Two) after receiving legal advice that the entire scheme, Phases Two and Three, should be covered by a single planning application. Work on this was due to start in 2003.

In August 2003, it emerged that the projected cost of the scheme had rocketed from £22.5m to £35.6m. Councillor Lucy Care, cabinet member for planning, transportation and environment, blamed the increase on inflation and delays due to extra public consultation. Work on Phase One of the scheme was due to be completed by November 2003.

The latest problem to hit this phase was the discovery by engineers that the road built on top of the old St Peter's Bridge, between St Peter's Street and the Corn Market, was on the verge of collapse. The road is to remain closed until at least the end of October 2004. The latest estimated cost for repairs is £540,000.

In July 2004, the council submitted its planning application for Phases Two and Three, complete with an Environmental Impact Assessment. The statutory notice of this submission informed people that a full copy of the environmental statement could be viewed on the council's website. Derby Heart members then pointed out that the environmental statement was missing an entire section relating to archaeological issues around King Street.

On August 6, the council issued a new notice highlighting its omission and stated that the full environmental statement could not be accessed on its website. Derby Heart has since located more than 70 errors or omissions in the report. The council decided to withdraw the latest planning application on the grounds that the environmental statement was flawed, though it did not announce this move publicly. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)