21.2.06: Bridge of Sighs
Environment Agency object to the Heysham M6 Link planning application.
The Environment Agency has dealt the Heysham M6 Link a massive blow by filing
damning objections to the Lancashire County Council (LCC) planning application.
This comes only days after the LCC tried to reassure locals that, despite questions
raised in the Commons by Geraldine Smith MP about the flood risk to Halton,
their relationship with the Environment Agency (EA) was still on track.
Among a long list of objections, the EA highlights the LCC’s failure to provide a flood
risk assessment or account fully for the ecological impact of the scheme.
The EA also states that design of the new bridge fails to meet its standards on several
counts, both visually and structurally.
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“These objections from the EA are a massive blow to the scheme and a huge
embarrassment to Lancashire County Council, who had been trying to calm people’s
fears over the flood risks in the plan,” says David Gate, chair of Transport Solutions
for Lancaster and Morecambe (TSLM), the independent group who favour non road
building solutions to the traffic problem. “It now looks like LCC will have to spend
considerably more time and money to satisfy the EA, and it may well be that the
government will not come up with the additional cash.”
“LCC have been too quick off the mark, despite several hundred letters of objection
and now the EA’s damning report. They want to approve their own planning
application
before the funding is finalised, but the government will not approve a scheme
without an exact costing for the bridge and other revised work, and where doubts
remain about the flood risk and environmental impact.”
Here is a brief summary of the Environment Agency response.
They object on the grounds that:
- there is no Flood Risk Assessment, and parts of the site are high risk zone
- there is insufficient information about
- streams which are realigned and watercourses which are lost
- the River Lune crossing: "reprofiling" its banks, the impact of the bridge piers,
the impacts of artificial lighting
- there is not enough compensation for
- the loss of watercourses and their habitats
- the loss of species rich meadows
- the proposed Lune bridge is unsatisfactory because
- the western pier would cause erosion of the bank, which is important for wildlife.
If the bank were protected, that too would damage wildlife
- the design is out of keeping with the area
- ground contamination: cannot be assessed due to missing site investigation report
To download the full EA response (pdf document), click here