Representation by Surrey Wildlife Trust (Surrey Wildlife Trust)
- Date submitted
- 6 September 2019
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The Surrey Wildlife Trust manages much of the protected land in the Ockham & Wisley Commons SSSI/part of the Thames Basin Heaths SPA surrounding M25 J10, on behalf of the landowners Surrey County Council. We have been engaged as a major stakeholder by Highways England and their consultants Atkins ltd throughout the consultation period leading up to the application for DCO. We have corresponded formally in response to the several consultation phases to date on the options for the scheme. We trust that PINS has been provided with copies of these responses. A summary of our final position is as follows. We recognise and understand the justification for the M25 J10/A3 Interchange Improvement Scheme. We regret as inevitable the short-term ecological impacts during construction and immediate operation of the scheme, but support the avoidance, mitigation and compensation strategy that has been developed in close consultation with ourselves to address these impacts and that can be expected to eventually result in long-term net gains for the biodiversity of the protected site. This agreed strategy must be implemented in its entirety, and our wholehearted support is further predicated on the observation of the recommendations of the separate feasibility study undertaken by Atkins advising on the preferred, desirable specification of the proposed green bridge to replace the existing Cockcrow bridge over the A3. As such, this bridge must incorporate a ‘green’ element at an absolute minimum width of 25 metres to ensure its effectiveness. In our considered opinion 10m will fail to achieve this.