Council back to drawing board over failed link road

A council which spent £56m on a failed road project will be going back to the drawing board to try and find an alternative solution.

Norfolk County Council had to withdraw its plans for the controversial Norwich Western Link road earlier this year because of concerns about its impact on rare bats.

Graham Plant, the Conservative councillor responsible for transport, said the authority was now "looking at alternative options" and aimed to have a preferred choice by next summer.

Leader of the Labour group, Steve Morphew, said a "plan B" should already have been in place and he could not "think of another example of a scheme so badly handled".

The 3.9-mile (6.2km) link road was due to connect the Northern Distributor Road to the A47 west of the city, and had been in the works for years.

The aim was to ease congestion and reduce rat-running through villages.

But after government advisers Natural England changed the rules protecting rare barbastelle bats, the council withdrew its planning application.

The council said it planned to spend £1.43m on exploring different options for the Western Link, with just under £1m of the funding expected to come from the Department for Transport (DfT).

However, a DfT spokesman said "no decisions have yet been made" on funding, and they would "provide updates on specific schemes in due course."

Plant, who insisted that drawing up a full-formed alternative earlier would have been too expensive, said he was "as confident as you can be" that a solution could be found.

"We'll be going back through previous options that we looked at – about 80 of them – but we'll be looking at new options as well."

The council admitted a dual carriageway over the River Wensum was unlikely because of the eco-restrictions, but said a single carriageway could be an option.

Work on developing the Western Link has already cost £56m, with £33m provided by the DfT.

Morphew said the money had been "wasted".

'I can't think of another example of a scheme so badly handled," he added.

"I wouldn't trust this Conservative administration to sweep the roads, let alone have another go at building one."

Liberal Democrat leader Brian Watkins said it was "no surprise that the Western Link in its original form is dead".

He added: "The Conservatives must take full responsibility for the wasted money and time which has been pumped into this doomed project."

The council said it would run a consultation on alternative proposals for the Western Link and intended to confirm its preferred option by next summer.

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