A27 plans: Scaremongering is not helping

He is apparently the secretary of the ‘Bypass not throughpass’ group.

His chairman was specifically invited to the last meeting of the A27 Working Group to hear the latest updates from Highways England and give his own presentation to the group. Hopefully he reported back what he heard.

While nothing can be set out in black and white until the consultants present their initial proposals for widespread public consultation in the New Year, that meeting heard that dualling of the online option cannot happen, speed limits are unlikely to be changed and most houses on the existing route will be untouched.

The A27 Working Group has organised a public meeting at 7pm this Friday to give more details and hopefully allay some of the unnecessary fears raised by scaremongering by the likes of Mr Kerridge.

The date was arranged by the Working Group, not me, in order to make sure all major parties including Highways England could attend and Worthing Pavilion was available. If we had wanted to ‘minimise attendance’ as Mr Kerridge claims, we would hardly have booked one of the largest venues in Worthing. We need as many people as possible to come to hear the facts not badly misinformed speculation.

Conversely, at the Worthing College meeting organised by Mr Kerridge, the two speakers were a former Green Party activist and a Friends of the Earth organiser from a group called ‘Campaign for better transport.’

On their website they claim ‘new roads don’t solve people’s transport problems’ and specifically oppose road building – so no hope of any sort of bypass there!

Most local people know that doing nothing is not an option, yet undermining attempts by community representatives to get the A27 upgrade back on track again risks exactly that and a return to the failure of the 1990s when it should have been sorted properly. I urge residents to come along to the meeting with an open mind.

Tim Loughton MP

House of Commons

Member of Parliament for East Worthing & Shoreham

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