Issue - meetings

Report of the Head of Planning, Economy and Regeneration seeking agreement to go out to public consultation over route options for a town centre relief road for Cullompton.

The Cabinet had before it a * report of the Head of Planning, Economy and Regeneration seeking agreement to go out to public consultation over route options for the town centre relief road for Cullompton.

The Cabinet Member for Planning and Economic Regeneration outlined the contents of the report reminding the meeting of the previous report considered in May 2018  which identified the current opportunity to progress planning for the delivery of a relief road in connection with the available funding stream via the Council’s Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF). The delivery of a relief road for Cullompton had been a long term objective receiving policy support within both the adopted and submitted Local Plans which would deliver benefits to the operation of J28 of the motorway and would also enable the reduction of traffic flows through the town centre resulting in air quality and town centre amenity benefits.  Significant highway improvements would be required to serve the proposed garden village to the east of J28 and a relief road would form the first part of such improvements.

Since the meeting in May, officers had worked closely with Devon County Council Highway Authority to assess potential options for a relief road. He identified the options (and plans) outlined in the report explaining the reasons why option d) had been discounted due to flood risk.  Therefore options a), b) and c) were proposed to be taken forward for public consultation. Following the public consultation period the preferred option would be considered at a future meeting of the Cabinet.

The Head of Planning, Economy and Regeneration provided responses to questions raised in Public Question Time: with regard to whether the relief road would benefit J28, advice had been sought from the Highway Authority and Highways England and it was felt that a relief road would give some improvements to Junction 28 with regard to issues with AM peak traffic, it would help distribute queuing and aid the PM traffic issues of queuing back on to the north bound off slip of the motorway which was of concern to Highways England; the fact that the original improvements to J28 were no longer supported by either the Highway Authority or Highways England, as it was felt that those original plans would not benefit traffic flow and junction operation as initially expected and they had expressed strong concern over the ability to construct the scheme.  Accordingly neither wished to take responsibility for its delivery and favoured the delivery of a relief road. Therefore it was felt that consulting on directing funds to J28 was not really an option as this was undeliverable.

With regard to questions relating to the flood risk assessment, work was still being undertaken to assess the flood implications of each option, however a flood risk assessment was available for the main flood corridor which considered a highway intervention, all the necessary information would be available when a final decision was made on the preferred option. All the information relating to the flood  ...  view the full minutes text for item 60