Building the Spalding Western Relief Road is more important than contributions for health and education, some councillors have argued as they passed plans for 400 associated homes last week.
Others raised concerns that the road will never be completed as South Holland District Council’s Planning Committee voted through final plans for 100 homes and outline plans for 300 more to be accessed off the new roundabout at Pinchbeck.
The cost of the most northerly section alone, one of five parts, has doubled to £48m.
The rest are yet to be financed.
Lincolnshire County Council is making up £27m of that cost and is looking to recover at most £10m from Section 106 payments through 1,100 homes planed for around the section.
Applicant Ashwood Homes says it’s prepared to pay contributions agreed for the road as part of the South and East Lincolnshire Local Plan, but provided a viability study to say it can’t also meet its requirements to build the asked for 25 per cent affordable homes and education and health costs for the first 100 homes.
Instead, just seven of the homes will be affordable as South Holland District Council’s Planning Committee voted the application through with a £802,800 contribution to the new relief road..
Some councillors expressed concern the road will never be built.
Planning Committee chairman Coun James Avery stepped aside from the vote as speaking as the ward councillor.
“I have a real fear that the relief road is never completed but we still get the housing,” he said. “That would be a major failure of the local plan.
“The maths in the report suggest the road is fully funded, but in reality the money is not yet in the bank.
“It should be fully funded similar to the Lincoln and Grantham projects.
“Until completed, the relief road will be no relief for Pinchbeck nor Spalding and people already suffer on the issues from the roads between the two towns before a single new house has been started. Increasing levels of traffic will exacerbate existing gridlock at certain times of the day.”
He also accused those working on the road of accessing the site via Blue Gowt Lane contrary to conditions on the road section’s planning permission and expressed doubt the policy compliant affordable homes and Section 106 contributions proposed by Ashwood for the outline permission would be met.
“They’ll sign up for anything,” he said. “All over the district we’re not getting the scale of health and education contributions. We are losing the plot somewhat if we go for massive reduced contributions in favour of joining up the relief road.”
Other councillors disagreed.
Coun Jack Tyrrell said: “I would sooner see the money go towards the relief road.
“If we don’t we’ll never get there in the end.”
Coun Rodney Grocock implied the application should be looked at differently.
“This has got to be looked at as a long term investment. I appreciate we are supposed to look at the application in front of us and no others, but this is a long term strategy for South Holland with a five phase road system and houses to boot. We can’t just look at the application without taking the other four into context.
“SHDC has already committed £1m. The last thing we want is to be a council that’s wasted £1m money and go against the application.”
Several councillors voted against the proposals.
Coun Rob Gibson said: “To me it feels like this road will never get completed.
“We’re going to end up with it hanging around our neck for 20-odd years, the road is going to be more gridlocked and it’s not going to be a relief road. I don’t know how we can accept this knowing that’s the case.”
Before the application was voted through Coun Roger Gambba-Jones laid the blame at Network Rail.
“It’s with a heavy heart that we’re approving this because in the grand scheme of things we’d rather leave that area of land undeveloped,” he said of the drastic closing of the gap between Spalding and Pinchbeck. “It’s only because of the impact of the railway line on Spalding and the fact that Network Rail and its previous iterations completely ignored our appeals to do something about that impact.
“Telling us the gates would be down for 40 minutes in an hour is what led to us looking at a relief road.
“We asked them for a diversion and they said it could would cost around £200m which sounds like small beer now. If they’d done it then we wouldn’t be having these problems now.”
Projects total funding remains up in air
As part of the Planning Committee meeting to decide on the 400 home plan, Lincolnshire County Council’s Paul Jackson provided an update on the financing of the Spalding Western Relief Road.
“In an ideal world we would like to deliver the relief road all in one hit,” he said. “It would have been three times the cost of this section five and quite simply, the county council could not afford that.”
When first costed six years ago the most northerly section of the road was due to cost £24m, but its now estimated to be £48m.
“It’s doubled in six years because of the cost of steel, inflation and delivering the project,” Mr Jackson continued. “We’ve gone through COVID and the war in Ukraine which has pushed the price up.
“We were successful in getting £20m from Homes England which remains the biggest allocation in the East Midlands region.
“We’ve spent the totality of that £20m already because in effect what’s been completed is half of this section’s relief road with the five arm roundabout, the piles either side of the railway line.
“We’re now in a situation where we’re spending this council and the county council’s capital,” he said referencing a £1m donation by South Holland District Council and the £27m shortfall on the county council.
The South and East Lincolnshire Local Plan suggested developer contributions surrounding the proposed 1,100 homes around the first section would only bring £10m back.
“The money is there and this section will get built in its totality,” he said. “You will get a roundabout and bridge to link it up to section four.
“The money is not there for sections one through to four at the moment.
“Anything at the moment is unlikely before the next election, but the government has said it will invest into infrastructure so we’re pretty confident once we’ve started something there’s a good argument we’ll get it funded.
“The model has to work and what we, as a council, need to do is peel back the money.
“The relief road is the highest priority for the plan and it maximises the potential for the district to get the best money over time.”
He also revealed a bid for funding of the most southerly section from Spalding Common had been unsuccessful as the project already has planning permission.
