No to £87m village bypass

A bid to build a bypass around Whaplode won’t be progressed after council officers claimed it would cost £87m to buy.

Lincolnshire County Council said the benefits of the project does not justify the spend.
It found that the cost would be between £45.2m and £139.7 with £87.4m ‘the most likely’.
Officers also said it would cause disruption to ‘over 40 private landowners’, would be subject to ‘significant flooding’ and electricity utilities and would require utilities being diverted.
However county councillor Peter Coupland said he was unhappy with the £30,000 survey into the project and would continue to fight for a bypass.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” he said. “I feel the report was off with its guesses.
“It’s all about travelling distances and they say it would only make 20 to 30 seconds difference, but I’ve travelled the proposed route and its more like three minutes. That doesn’t sound much but if you multiply it by the five million vehicles a year that use the road it all adds up.
“There also seems to have been no value placed on the environmental impacts, particular on the residents who live along the existing road in Whaplode.
“One of the main drivers for me should be to make the lives better for those who live along the road.
“The £87m figures seems a complete guesstimate and I’m annoyed we’ve spent £30,000 on a survey and don’t seem to have many finite details.
“I’ve been mandated by the people of Whaplode to push for this and I will continue to hammer home their views until they tell me not to.”
Coun Coupland added he will look to call a public meeting on the issue in the next few months.
Coun Richard Davies, Lincolnshire County Council’s executive member for highways, said: “We recently carried out a feasibility assessment looking into the prospect of building a Whaplode bypass.
“What we found was that, based on the Department for Transport’s scoring system for funding, this project wouldn’t offer enough benefits or value-for-money to attract government money towards the £85m-plus scheme.
“As a result, we’ve decided not to progress this idea any further for the time being.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean a Whaplode bypass will never be built, but it does mean another funding source would be needed before we progress to the next step – the design and business case stage – which would cost £2-4m.”