Issue - meetings

Motion

Meeting: 21/04/2021 - Council (Item 91)

A period of up to one hour is allocated to consider the motions on notice. This may only be extended with the agreement of the Council.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chairman opened the debate in respect of Motions that had been submitted for consideration at the meeting and in doing so reminded Members that they could not discuss specific planning applications when commenting on the Motions.

A Western Distributor Road for Bromsgrove

Members considered the following Motion on Notice submitted by Councillor L. Mallett:

Council notes the WCC JMP Western Bypass Report, 2015. This report was subsequently discredited as a basis for understanding the feasibility of such a scheme in research commissioned by Bromsgrove Council in 2018.

Council resolves to urgently review the case and formally assess the feasibility of the Western Distributor /Relief Road. This would allow the incorporation of this scheme, should it be found to be feasible, into all relevant planning documents and funding opportunities, at the earliest opportunity.

The Motion was proposed by Councillor L. Mallett and seconded by Councillor H. Rone-Clarke.

In proposing the Motion, Councillor Mallett commented that the subject of the Motion was not new to the District, having been discussed for 2 decades and he thanked Whitford Vale Voice for the petition that they had submitted on this subject and the people who had signed the petition.

Members were advised that what was being discussed was a distributor road, not a bypass. The purpose of a distributor road would be to enable traffic to progress round to the west of the town without having to go through the town centre. Councillor Mallett noted that there was a distributor road in Worcester, between the north and south M5 junctions, which set a precedent for towns in the county to have distributor roads. Councillor Mallett commented that the introduction of a distributor road would also help to address problems with congestion in the town centre, the issues arising from vehicles using residential streets, such as All Saints Road, to travel through the town, the impact of high traffic volumes on air pollution, which impacted on the health of local residents and would have a beneficial impact on economic growth in the town.

When sites to the west of Bromsgrove were designated as suitable for development in 2004, Bromsgrove District Council had requested that a Western Relief Road should be considered. However, Councillor Mallett commented that no assessment appeared to have subsequently been undertaken by Worcestershire County Council in respect of this matter. Consequently, since then, a number of developments had been approved, though without the mitigating action that had been intended when those sites were first earmarked for development.

In 2014 Councillor Mallett had proposed a Motion which had resulted in the Council agreeing unanimously that a relief road should be considered. This decision had ultimately triggered the JMP report, commissioned by Worcestershire County Council. Councillor Mallett questioned the appropriateness of the brief that had been provided to JMP for this report and he commented that it did not give proper consideration to local road infrastructure and traffic volumes, did not assess the economic benefits arising from easing congestion and did not take ... view the full minutes text for item 91