Link Road protesters make legal challenge

Hastings Alliance has served notices on HM Treasury, Department for Transport (DfT) and East Sussex County Council (ESCC) announcing it wants leave to apply for a review over the Government’s funding towards the Hastings to Bexhill Link Road.

This comes three months after Chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget the Government would contribute £56 million towards the scheme with ESCC providing the remaining £47 million.

Alliance chairman Nick Bingham said this week: “The East Sussex County Council promoted scheme is such an awful scheme and on so many counts that there was never any doubt that the Hastings Alliance of local and national environmental groups would continue its campaign until all opportunities to defeat this vanity scheme had been exhausted.”

It is estimated up to 3,000 jobs and 2,000 new homes will be created by the road and £1 billion generated for the local economy.

But Hastings Alliance says it has evidence that the case for the link road is ‘weak’ and there are ‘large uncertainties’ about the claims of benefits it will bring.

The group claims ESCC failed to analyse alternative schemes and the council’s figure for job creation has been doubled.

It also claims the DfT has estimated the environmental damage to be about £77million, and that funds allocated to the project are insufficient.

Mr Bingham also referred to the DfT’s report last year that graded the link road low in terms of value for money.

“Given such a downbeat assessment from the DfT, we find it illogical that they decided in the end to agree partial funding and would question how and for what reasons this decision was reached,” added Mr Bingham. “Unfortunately, we have been denied the DfT recommendations to minister Norman Baker, given immediately prior to the budget statement. We are appealing against the DfT decision to hold back this key information which we firmly believe should be published for all to see.

“Not to take this action is not an option in any case, but in the days before the international Rio +20 Earth Summit conference in Brazil, we believe our challenge is even more justifiable and necessary.

If the alliance’s bid for a review is successful, it could delay the scheme which is currently expected to be completed by 2016.”

ESCC leader Peter Jones, said: “We are very disappointed at this challenge so late in the day. The funding decision was made back in March after an extra three months of consideration by DfT ministers, and the Hastings Alliance was fully engaged in that process. To take this action now feels like an attempt at a delaying tactic, as we believe the argument on which it’s based has already been exhaustively debated. It seems that some people have a problem in accepting the outcome of democratic due process. We will continue with the important environmental preparation work while this challenge takes its course.”