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The sunken wreck of the disastrously unsound Eastern Westbury Bypass project was deviously attempted to be re-floated by Conservative
Wiltshire Council.
Most Westbury area residents do not want an Eastern Bypass, or a bypass which could be anywhere, but overwhelmingly asked WC
for a western route.
Wiltshire Council’s living dead Eastern Westbury Bypass project has now been deleted by the Core Strategy Planning Inspector.
It is hopefully dead for good.
Rather than blame objectors for pointing out the deficiencies in the mad plan, people should consider where the blame actually lies:
within Wiltshire Council.
A basic relief road which linked Westbury's trading estates and railway station to the A36, which ran west beside the existing
railway track, would be the least disruptive and would be highly effective in drawing off the heavy goods traffic.
This is really fundamental. Wiltshire Council defiantly chose the wrong route.
Conservative Council Leader Jane Scott spun up a 'promise', in her Wiltshire Magazine, to have construction work started on the
Eastern Bypass by 2010.
Wiltshire Council’s Eastern Bypass only of Westbury was never going to have viable traffic volume benefits and could not justify
the input of public funding.
WC's Eastern Bypass was recommended against by many Expert Inspectors, notably after the Public Inquiry held in Westbury in 2008.
Wiltshire Council did not appeal the decision, which properly went against its Eastern Bypass.
However, later, Conservative Wiltshire Council improperly tried to sneak its failed ruled-against Eastern Bypass back within
its Wiltshire Core Strategy.
The futile and expensively failed Eastern Bypass project is led by Conservative Councillor Fleur de Rhe-Philipe, who is believed to
block consideration of the far more viable western routes. So Westbury Bypass means Eastern Bypass in WC.
A road through the best countryside would obviously encounter stiff opposition.
The Eastern Westbury Bypass was a selfish project which would have eased life for a few but would have made the HGV traffic
much worse for more elsewhere. Its bad effects outweighed its low benefit, as the planning inspector observed.
The rotten Eastern Bypass project sank with all hands (except for its captain).
If only to salvage lost pride, Conservative-controlled Wiltshire Council is still aspiring to bring it back, by spending more
public millions on consultants who may again be told to bend the statistics and to recommend the eastern route.
A discreet WC hope is next to await a developer ready do a housing/road deal.
Wiltshire Council’s strange insistence on a failed and ruled-against project is due to knowing-best Warminster Councillor
Fleur de Rhe-Philipe, who has spun her Eastern Westbury Bypass against reason over many years. Councillor Fleur
de Rhe-Philipe’s persistence has fooled many who should have known better.
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