“It beggars belief”: Council slammed for raiding active travel funds to build “unnecessary, damaging” new road in small town

A council’s plans to plunder its active travel budget to build a highly contentious and “unnecessary” relief road have been condemned by local campaigners and politicians, who say it “beggars belief” that the authority would spend the bulk of its active travel funding on new roads, instead of “investing properly in walking and cycling”.

In the first draft of its new proposed budget, set to be finalised in February, Oxfordshire County Council says it will take £11.1 million from its £13.62 million cycling and walking fund, earmarked for schemes which “encourage and facilitate active travel and improve market towns”, to build a new relief road in Watlington, a small market town with a population of around 3,000.

According to the council, the bypass will “reduce congestion and noise and air pollution” in the town, while connecting existing and proposed housing developments around its northern and western sides, and providing access for motorists in south Oxfordshire to the M40, A34, and B4009 without the need to travel through the centre of Watlington.

Watlington High Street

The plans also say that the road will include facilities for cycling, walking, and travelling by bus. However, engineering consultants have said that these “basic” facilities are “unlikely to see significant levels of use” – prompting local campaigners to insist that the project is “not an active travel measure and should not be considered as such”.

Last week, the Oxfordshire Roads Action Alliance (ORAA), a community-based campaign group which promotes sustainable transport across the county and opposes the creation of new roads, wrote to councillors last week calling on them to vote against the Liberal Democrat and Green Party-controlled authority’s proposed budget.

“At a time when the county council is seriously short of money it makes no sense to be pushing this unnecessary road,” the ORAA’s co-chair Chris Church told the Oxfordshire Herald.

“What money is available should be spent on fixing potholes across the county rather than a damaging new road round one small town.

“This proposed road is not an active travel measure and should not be considered as such. A track for pedestrians and cyclists beside a large new road does not meet current standards for such schemes.

“This is a questionable use of public money and misrepresentation of its purpose.”

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Meanwhile, Labour county councillor Charlie Hicks was also scathing of the local authority’s failure to meet its cycling and walking targets, while being seemingly set to raid its active travel coffers for new roads.

“While there is a pothole black hole of hundreds of millions of pounds in Oxfordshire and the council is on course to miss its own walking and cycling targets, it beggars belief that the Lib Dems would take millions from the walking and cycling pot and spend it on building new roads, rather than fixing the roads they are already meant to look after or investing properly in walking and cycling,” he said.

National engineering consultants Hydrock also pointed out that while the proposed scheme would provide “basic pedestrian and cycle facilities”, these are “unlikely to see significant levels of use” due to the nature of the road.

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However, the council has insisted that the plans would “meet the needs of existing and future communities” by reducing congestion.

“The proposed relief road will help to ensure that Watlington is able to meet the needs of existing and future communities by significantly reducing congestion through the heart of the settlement,” a spokesperson said.

“It includes facilities for walking, cycling, and travel by bus, as well as delivering connectivity to the wider network through proposed active travel improvements at Pyrton Lane and Shirburn Road.

“However, we will always ensure that safety, the climate, maintenance considerations, and measures to facilitate active travel are at the heart of any new road design and construction programmes.

“Pothole repairs and facilitating travel on foot and/or by bicycle have always played, and will continue to play, a key part in the overall budget setting process for this administration.”

Meanwhile, the council’s cabinet member for infrastructure and development strategy, Judy Roberts says that the plans will benefit cycling and walking in Watlington because they will help reduce congestion in the town.

“Its aim is to alleviate congestion, noise, and air pollution in the town centre and enable future housing developments, by offering more sustainable modes of transport including cycling and walking,” Roberts said last month when the plans were officially submitted and a consultation process agreed.

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While the use of active travel funds for new roads has provoked consternation in Oxfordshire, a similar uproar occurred last month in Northern Ireland, where the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) was accused of potentially misleading reporting of its active travel spending, after telling the public that it is spending £2.6m on a cycle lane project, only for it to since emerge that a major part of the supposed “active travel” investment is for “resurfacing of the carriageway”.

In a report published by the Belfast Telegraph, the newspaper said it wanted to question why the DfI described the entire £2.6m allocated for the project near Ballykelly as coming from its active travel budget “when most of the work relates to a road for cars and lorries”.

The newspaper stated that it “also asked whether this is the way in which DfI regularly apportions expenditure, describing road building as ‘active travel’,” a habit that also seems to have caught on across the Irish Sea if Oxfordshire County Council’s new plans are anything to go by.