LINK ROAD

South Derbyshire MP, Mark Todd, wants the Department for Trade and Industry to provide £10m to ensure that the road linking the A50 at the A514 junction at Chellaston with Wilmore Road is completed. Since 2001, part of the road has been built with housing developments running alongside, but it has stopped two-thirds of a mile short of connecting with it's proposed destination at Wilmore Road.

This is because the road has been funded by developers and there is currently no housing or business developments in the pipeline for the final stretch. Mr Todd said, "It was mistakenly decided that this should be funded entirely by developers and they have not come forward to complete the job.

Lucy Care, city council cabinet member for planning, said, "Without building this road we can't use that land for the purposes it has in the Local Plan and free up the land for businesses."

There is a growing trend in planning matters to involve firms in the provision of facilities which would traditionally have been supplied at public cost. As a result, for example, it is now fairly common for property developers to agree to help meet the cost of building a new school as a condition of being allowed to press ahead with a new housing estate.

And housebuilders might also be persuaded to delve into their anticipated profits to provide roads for their developments. For better or worse, it's all part of the wheeling and dealing which seems to form part of the planning process these days. Everyone's a winner. Except, that is, where you have the sort of nonsensical situation which has arisen in Chellaston.

A road linking the A50/A514 junction with Wilmore Road would be a good scheme, it was decided, and it has been under construction since 2001. Better still, as far as the public purse is concerned, the cost was being met by property developers building along the route.

But when you start planning and building a road, it must bring that little warm glow of extra satisfaction to know that it will actually have an end as well as a beginning. Alas, that is a feeling which is being denied the planners in Chellaston.

For, having embarked on the dotted line route, they have hit the complication that there are no housing or business developments scheduled for the last stretch, so nobody will pay for it. What a shambles. What a triumph for blind optimism over realism.

Now the Department of Trade and Industry is to be asked to shell out about £10m to complete the link, thus providing what was felt to be a vital road to serve the business park development planned for south of Wilmore Road. But if the ministry politely declines, it promises to be a very costly lesson for the local authority to digest.

Never again, one hopes, will such a project be started without the security of knowing that somebody will be prepared to pay for its completion. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

Jonathan Guest, director of development for Derby City Council, claims that careful thought has gone into the planning of the partially-built A50 link road route, from Wilmore Road to The Bonnie Prince. This road has often been referred to as the Chellaston bypass, by the city council, and this has been used as an excuse not to place a weight limit on the A514 through Chellaston, as eventually the new road would take the strain.

Mr Guest is now admitting that this is not the case and anyone who uses the new road will see that it has a number of deficiencies. Firstly, the route will provide good access to the Rolls-Royce and Sinfin industrial areas, but leaves those wishing to access the city centre, or even the A5111, in a bit of a no-man's land.

Secondly, it is designed as a residential access route with multiple roundabouts and junctions, not the sort of thing the average truck driver will wish to negotiate on a regular basis. Thirdly, the majority of the route is, or will be, single carriageway, with pedestrian refuges to narrow the road still further, so that it is actually narrower than the A514, which it is intended to relieve.

Fourthly, the road runs through a high-density housing development and, once the road is fully open, it will not be long before residents living alongside it are suffering as much with noise, pollution and potential danger as those who presently live on the A514.

An important project has become compromised, because the cash-strapped city council is unable to take the lead and create infrastructure which meets the needs of its residents and businesses, now and in the future. Instead, it has to rely on hand-outs from developers in return for planning permission. John Bowden