Representation by Benjamin Thompson
- Date submitted
- 30 August 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
My parents live at (REDACTED) where the Langrigg road meets the A66: their house will now be entirely surrounded by roads, hard standing and ponds, and their views will be removed by the planting in the fields. But this is not just a NIMBY plea: building a road south of the current one will wreck a beautiful farmed landscape of fields and becks, when there is a very unattractive landscape of scrubland directly to the north of the current road. Ironically, of course, this is part of the AONB: but anyone actually looking at the two areas will immediately see that the area to the north does not have ‘beauty’ (let alone ‘outstanding’) whereas the area to the south emphatically does. It seems completely obvious that the road should go north. The consultation process has been confusing and inadequate, especially for my elderly parents, but also for we, their children, trying to help them. The final version of the plan in fact includes an entirely new feature right next to their house, a hugely wide spur from the sliproad (almost as wide at its mouth as a dual carriageway), which was not on previous plans (e.g. those from March 2022). Where has this come from? We had no warning about this. Earlier in the process, my parents were not offered adequate information (e.g. the first meeting, when the plans were only produced right at the end), and in our meetings it was clear that no consideration would be given to alternative routes. On procedural grounds alone this should be rejected.