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Norfolk County Council’s Cabinet has this morning agreed Option C as the preferred route for the Norwich Western Link.
As mentioned previously, we recommended Option C as the best overall solution and preferred route for the new link road between the A47 and Broadland Northway (formerly the NDR) as it balances all of the issues the project needs to address. It limits environmental impacts, has a high cost-to-benefit ratio, reduces congestion and rat-running on existing roads, minimises the impact on communities and properties, and received considerable support through our recent consultation.
This is a major milestone for the project and, while there is still much work to be done, having a preferred route brings us a step closer to starting work to construct the Norwich Western Link in late 2022 and opening the road to traffic in early 2025, subject to securing funding and completing necessary statutory processes.
Further surveys and design work will now be carried out to develop the preferred route. This will include the development of complementary measures to mitigate environmental impacts, encourage walking, cycling and public transport use, and limit the amount, speed and type of vehicles using the existing road network in the area where appropriate.
Alongside our work to identify a preferred route, we have also put together a Strategic Outline Business Case for the project which councillors on our Cabinet also approved today. We intend for this to be submitted to the Department for Transport by the end of the month, which will start the process required to secure funding for the Norwich Western Link from the government. We have an excellent case for the need for the road and strong support from the public, the business community, emergency services, local councils and MPs, so we’re very hopeful we’ll be successful.
We’ll continue to let you know when there are significant updates about the project, and we’ll keep the Norwich Western Link pages of the County Council website updated, which you can find at www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl . There will also be a further public consultation on the preferred route before we submit our planning application.
We have today (Friday 5 July) published a preferred route recommendation for the Norwich Western Link.
The County Council wants to provide a higher standard connection between the western end of Broadland Northway (formerly the NDR) and the A47 to significantly improve travel between these two major roads. There is strong support from the public, the business community, emergency services, local councils and MPs for a link road to be created, which is needed to tackle traffic congestion, rat-running and delays to journeys on minor roads to the west of Norwich.
Late last year, the County Council published a shortlist of four potential road options for the Norwich Western Link and carried out a public consultation on these options between November 2018 and January 2019.
Having considered the consultation responses alongside other crucial information, such as transport benefits, environmental effects, value for money and impacts on local communities, we have recommended Option C , a new 3.9 mile dual carriageway road, as the best overall solution and preferred route for the Norwich Western Link.
Option C would link from the roundabout at the western end of Broadland Northway and extend for around 350 metres along the A1067 Fakenham Road before turning in a south-westerly direction via a new junction. The road would cross the River Wensum on a viaduct and then continue at or near ground level for the remainder of its length. It would link to the A47 via a new junction at Wood Lane (B1535), which forms part of Highways England’s plan to dual the A47 between North Tuddenham and Easton. Please see the attached map which shows the route.
We have recommended Option C as the preferred route as it balances all of the issues that the project needs to address, including limiting environmental impacts, having a high cost-to-benefit ratio, reducing congestion and rat-running on existing roads, minimising the impact on communities and properties, and receiving considerable support through our recent consultation.
We’re committed to creating this road in an environmentally responsible way and are aiming to achieve ‘biodiversity net gain’ by, for example, creating new habitats and including features such as green bridges. And one of the Norwich Western Link’s project objectives is to encourage people to shift the way they travel to use more sustainable forms of transport, such as walking, cycling and public transport. Taking traffic off the existing road network will help with this, but we’ll also work to develop complementary transport measures that will support this ambition once the preferred route has been agreed.
It’s important to say that at this stage the preferred route is only a recommendation. Councillors on the County Council’s Cabinet will meet on Monday 15 July to discuss the contents of the report and will be asked to agree a preferred route for the Norwich Western Link. We’ll let you know the outcome of this meeting and next steps for the project on 15 July.
You can read the full report on the Norwich Western Link that our councillors are considering at the Cabinet meeting, as well as further information such as questions and answers, on our website at www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl .
We realise we've gone a bit quiet with the updates since our public consultation on four shortlisted options for a Norwich Western Link closed in January this year. Since then, we've been carrying out - and continue to carry out - a great deal of work with the aim of identifying a preferred route.
Analysing the 1,900 responses we received to the consultation is one of the elements that will inform this decision but there are a lot of other very important factors we need to consider too, including: the results from ecological surveys and environmental information; the routes' effectiveness at improving traffic issues in the area and meeting the other project objectives; and costs and the ratio of those costs to the benefits they are likely to create.
As mentioned, we still have work to do so we don't have a preferred route yet. However, we're planning to provide a report for a preferred route to councillors in Norfolk County Council's Cabinet in July. The primary reason for this timing is so that we can take account of information from ecological surveys we've been carrying out and that have to happen at a certain time of year due to the seasonal nature of some species and their activity.
The County Council's Cabinet will consider and be asked to make a decision on a preferred route when it meets on Monday 15 July and a report will be published around a week before this meeting. We'll post another news update in July to make you aware that the report is published and where you can find it.
We appreciate this is a decision that's important for many of you, for a wide variety of reasons, so I hope this update is useful. If you want to find out more about the Norwich Western Link and our work to date in the meantime, there's a lot of information on our website at www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl .
People who are motivated by a tight deadline are in luck, as there is now less than half a day left to give us your thoughts on our Norwich Western Link route options .
Our public consultation closes at midnight tonight (Friday 18 January) so if you haven't responded already, please don't wait any longer. Equally, if you know someone who hasn't responded yet but wants to, it would be great if you could give them a nudge towards www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl. It would be really helpful if you give responses to all sections of the consultation survey - so all the sections on the individual options and the final options comparison section .
Once the consultation closes, we'll go through all the responses we've received and use them to help us identify a preferred route for the Norwich Western Link later this year. Exactly how long this will take depends on the volume of responses we receive and how detailed those responses are, but we'll work as quickly as we can while making sure we do a thorough job.
We'll continue to post news updates as and when we have anything we can tell you, and the Norwich Western Link pages of the Norfolk County Council website (link above) will also be updated.
Thanks to everyone who has responded to the consultation already and thanks in advance to the rest of you who like to go down to the wire.
After nearly eight weeks, 14 consultation events (including the final one tomorrow at Honingham) and more than 1,100 responses, our consultation on our four shortlisted route options for a Norwich Western Link will draw to a close this Friday at midnight.
This means you only have three full days left to give us your thoughts, which we'll use to help us identify a preferred route for the Norwich Western Link later this year. You can respond to the consultation by filling in the online survey - please go through all sections of the survey, including each individual option and the options comparison section at the end, and tell us what you think, including any relevant information you think we should consider before deciding on a preferred route.
If you've already responded to the consultation, please tell any friends, relatives or neighbours that you think might be interested and have an opinion on our Norwich Western Link options about the consultation and how they can respond. We try to get the word out through these news updates, social media, community newsletters, newspapers and radio stations, posters in libraries and other things, but sometimes there is no substitute for word of mouth. Thanks very much to those who have helped to spread the word already.
As alluded to above, it's our final consultation event tomorrow at Honingham Village Hall on Dereham Road. This is your last chance to speak to staff involved in the project face to face before the consultation closes, so do drop in to see us any time between 2 and 8pm.
Yes, 20 days have passed since we launched our consultation on the four shortlisted options for a Norwich Western Link and we find ourselves preparing for our final consultation event before Christmas.
This is at Fakenham's Salvation Army Church on Oak Street (NR21 9DY) tomorrow (Friday, 14 December) from 2 to 8pm. We know people are busy at this time of year, with Christmas shopping, parties and nights out competing for your attention, as well as the normal responsibilities of work, school and family. But if you do live in or near Fakenham and have an interest in our route options and what we're planning to do to improve travel between the A47 and Broadland Northway, we'd love to see you at our event tomorrow. Who knows, we might even treat you to an impromptu carol or two. Not sure that's much of an enticement...
We're holding a few events a little further afield this time following feedback from our initial consultation in the summer - the rationale being that people who travel through the area to the west of Norwich are also likely to have a keen interest in the Norwich Western Link. So as well as Fakenham tomorrow, we'll be calling in at Aylsham and Dereham in January, along with holding other events closer to where our shortlisted options are. You can see our full list of consultation events on our website .
We've had a good turnout at our events so far, we're probably averaging about 100 people at each of them. At our event in Taverham this week we were particularly pleased to have a group of students from Taverham High School come along with their teacher. They were a great bunch, really interested in the project, asking lots of questions and letting us know what they thought - you can't ask for much more than that. Thanks to them and their teacher for coming along, it was really lovely to meet you and see that you care about what's going on in your local community. You can read more about their visit on the EDP website here .
We'd love to see more students and young people at our events in the new year - we'd love to see anyone and everyone of course but there is something really nice about getting the younger generation interested in a large-scale project like the Norwich Western Link. This is something that stands to make a big difference to people in the area after all, in the shorter and longer term.
So on that note, if you're a local teacher, parent or involved in your local school community and you'd like to get your students involved in the project as it continues, we'd really like to hear from you. You can contact us on the email address at the bottom of the 'Have your say' web page on our website and we'll get back to you.
A final reminder before I wrap this up like a Christmas present - if you haven't done so already, please don't forget to respond to the current consultation on our four Norwich Western Link options via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl . And please spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested in telling us what they think. All the responses to the consultation will be considered when we're deciding on a preferred route for the Norwich Western Link, so it's really important to get involved now.
We have four Norwich Western Link consultation events next week, so lots of opportunities to view details of our four potential route options, ask any questions and respond to the consultation in person.
Come and see us at...
- Easton Village Hall, Marlingford Road, Easton, NR9 5AD on Monday 10 December (2 - 8pm)
- Taverham Village Hall, Sandy Lane, Taverham, NR8 6JR on Tuesday 11 December (12 - 6pm)
- the Hall for All, Weston Longville, Church Street, NR9 5JU on Wednesday 12 December (2 - 8pm)
- the Salvation Army Church, 16 Oak Street, Fakenham, NR21 9DY on Friday 14 December (2 - 8pm)
We have more events to come but these are our last events in December, so if you're keen to talk to us this month, make sure you get one of these dates in your diary.
Thanks to everyone who's come along to an event so far, it's been really good to talk to you all. We even had a girl come along to our event in Hockering who, if I remember correctly, was eight and three quarters and who asked us lots of great questions about the Norwich Western Link and what we all did on the project. It was so lovely to see someone so young have the interest and confidence to talk to us about this!
Thanks also to the 400+ of you who have responded to the consultation already, most of you via our online survey which you can find via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl . If you haven't responded yet, you've got till Friday 18 January so there's still time - just don't forget in a mince pie and mulled wine daze!
We have a busy second week of the consultation - and first week of December - planned with three events taking place where you can look through information on our route options, ask any questions you have and respond to the consultation in person.
We're at Drayton Village Hall (Pond Lane, NR8 6PP) on Monday from 2 to 8pm, The Forum in Norwich city centre (NR2 1TF) on Tuesday from 12 to 5pm and Hockering Village Hall (Heath Road, NR20 3HY) on Wednesday (2 - 8pm).
We still have plenty more consultation events to come in December and January, so you won't have lost your chance if you can't make it to any of these. And you can of course look through all the consultation information and respond online via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl , where you can also find details of all upcoming consultation events.
Thanks to everyone who came to our event in Ringland this week, there were around 100 of you all told and we hope you found it helpful.
We're gearing up for our first consultation event tomorrow in Ringland and we're hoping to see lots of people there.
Here are the precise details - we'll be at Ringland Village Hall on The Street (NR8 6JA) between 2 and 8pm tomorrow (Wednesday 28 November). You can come and see us at any point between these times to look through information on our route options, ask any questions you have and respond to the consultation in person.
If you can't make it to the event tomorrow, we have 13 other consultation events in the diary between now and mid-January (when the consultation closes) so there'll be lots of opportunities to come and tell us what you think.
And of course you can look through all the consultation information and respond online via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl .
Our Norwich Western Link consultation is now open! This is your chance to tell us what you think of our four potential route options to to connect the A47 to Broadland Northway (formerly the Northern Distributor Road), which are designed to improve travel between these two major roads and tackle transport problems in the area.
We've published additional information about the options to coincide with the consultation launching, so please have a good look through all of this and then give us your views via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl . The additional information includes information on environmental considerations and traffic modelling information – how each of the routes is likely to affect levels of traffic on other roads - as well as an artist's impression to give people an indication of how a viaduct over the River Wensum could look.
You can also find information about our 14 public consultation events via this link (click on the 'Have your say' section to see the full list). The events will give you the opportunity to speak to staff involved in the project, view details on the options and respond in person. The first of our events is in Ringland this Wednesday, so we hope to see some of you there.
As ever, and particularly now the consultation is live, please help us spread the word about it by telling friends, family, neighbours etc, sharing our posts on Facebook and Twitter and anything else you can think of. We really do want everyone who may want to give us their views to have the chance, and we know that not everyone reads the local newspaper, listens to the radio or is on social media.
In case you're wondering why we're carrying out this consultation, let me tell you - the responses will help us identify a preferred option for the Norwich Western Link in spring 2019, so this an important stage of the project. Thanks in advance for taking the time to give us your views.
You may be aware that Norfolk County Council’s Environment, Development and Transport Committee approved four options for a potential Norwich Western Link last week and these are now our shortlist of options. You can read more about these options here - these have been slightly updated since before the committee meeting, so do have a look.
This means we've got confirmation that we can carry out a public consultation on these options between Monday 26 November 2018 and Friday 18 January 2019. During the consultation, people will be asked for their views on the options and these responses will help the council identify a preferred option for a Norwich Western Link in spring 2019.
You will be able to find out more about the options and respond to the consultation online via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl from Monday 26 November. You can also respond in person, and ask any questions you may have, at a series of staffed events taking place in local communities throughout the consultation period.
And you can now put these events in your diaries as all the venues and times are confirmed, as follows. All the events will run from 2-8pm unless otherwise stated.
You might notice that we'll be taking a break from holding consultation events from mid-December until early January. This is because we think many people will have other things on their mind in this period of time (a little thing called Christmas) but all the consultation information and survey will still be available online during this time.
A lot of factors will need to be considered when agreeing on a preferred route for the Norwich Western Link so we would encourage everyone to look through all the information available as part of the consultation before making their response.
Please share information about the consultation and the events will anyone you know who might be interested, we really do want to get lots of responses and for everyone to have the chance to tell us what they think. Thank you and we look forward to seeing some of you in person at the events!
After months of work, we can today reveal four shortlisted road options for a Norwich Western Link. You can find a map showing these routes and a description of each of the options below.
Earlier this year, you'll probably remember that our first Norwich Western Link public consultation established there was very strong support for creating a new link between the A47 and Broadland Northway (formerly Northern Distributor Road), with the majority of those who responded suggesting a new road as their preferred solution. The consultation was prompted by long-standing concerns about traffic congestion on roads and in communities to the west of Norwich and calls from many people to fill in what they saw as the ‘missing link’ between the A47 and Broadland Northway.
Three new dual carriageway roads and a single carriageway upgrade to the B1535 make up the shortlisted options. While the majority of the new or improved roads would be built at or near ground level, viaduct-style bridges over river flood plains are included in some of the options. All of the routes also include improvements to the A1067 Fakenham Road.
The work to shortlist these routes as a potential Norwich Western Link followed Department for Transport assessment guidelines and included traffic surveys and modelling, gathering information on environmental and ecological factors in the area and developing a longlist of road and non-road options.
followed Department for Transport assessment guidelines and included traffic surveys and modelling, gathering information on environmental and ecological factors in the area and developing a longlist of road and non-road options.The shortlisted options, from west to east, are:
Option A – a 7.2 mile single carriageway upgrade to the B1535 and A1067, linking to the A47 at the Wood Lane junction north of Honingham. This option would significantly realign the current B road, smoothing it out to make it a higher standard route. The route would join the A1067 via a new junction at Lenwade and make use of the existing bridge across the River Wensum at Attlebridge.
It is predicted this route would carry around 10,000 vehicles a day by 2040. The estimated cost is £60 million.
Option B – a new dual carriageway route and dual carriageway upgrade of the A1067 totalling 5.2 miles, with the new route to the east of Weston Longville and linking to the A47 at Wood Lane. At the northern end of this route, two alternatives are given for how it could join the A1067. One would be via a new junction near Attlebridge which would include widening the existing River Wensum bridge at Attlebridge. The other would see a new 660 metre viaduct crossing of the Wensum created, joining the A1067 further to the east.
It is predicted this route would carry around 30,000 vehicles a day by 2040. The estimated cost is £155 million based on the viaduct alternative as this has a higher cost.
Option C – a new dual carriageway route and dual carriageway upgrade of the A1067, linking to the A47 at Wood Lane and totalling 3.9 miles. Around 350 metres of the A1067 would be dualled before a new junction would take the route between Weston Longville and Ringland, crossing the River Wensum on a 720 metre-long viaduct.
It is predicted this route would carry around 32,000 vehicles a day by 2040. The estimated cost is £153 million.
Option D – a new dual carriageway route and dual carriageway upgrade of the A1067 totalling 3.6 miles. The route is similar to Option C at its northern end, however it then runs to the west of Ringland and links to the A47 further east at the junction with Taverham Road. Around 400 metres of the A1067 would be dualled before a new junction would take the route between Weston Longville and Ringland, crossing the River Wensum on a 660 metre-long viaduct, then turning more to the south and crossing the River Tud on a second viaduct, this one 120 metres long, before it meets the A47.
It is predicted this route would carry around 31,000 vehicles a day by 2040. The estimated cost is £161 million.
While road options came out as the most effective Norwich Western Link, we will still consider complementing any of these options with other transport measures such as walking and cycling routes and traffic management measures on other roads.
Councillors on our Environment, Development and Transport Committee will be asked next Friday (9 November) to give their approval of this shortlist and proceed with a public consultation on them between 26 November 2018 and 18 January 2019. You can read the full report on the Norwich Western Link options that councillors will receive You can read the full report on the Norwich Western Link options that councillors will receive here .
The consultation will help us identify a preferred option for a Norwich Western Link, which we intend to do by next spring. Further details on the routes will be published to coincide with the consultation’s launch, and we'll update you when we've confirmed when and where our consultation events will take place. Watch this space.
So when the consultation begins, we'd encourage you to look through all the information available before responding, and if you have any questions that the published consultation information doesn’t answer, please let us know – whether in person at one of our dedicated consultation events or by email.
The consultation into transport issues to the west of Norwich closed just over a month ago in early July and we now have some results to share with you.
A report detailing the results of the consultation has been produced and will be available to read and download on our website from later this morning at www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl under the ‘Have your say’ section. However, before then we can give you a summary of some of the key findings.
The Norwich Western Link consultation had two elements – a text-based ‘Initial Views’ questionnaire and a map on which people could highlight transport issues in specific locations.
The Initial Views consultation received more than 1,700 responses while more than 750 comments from just over 530 contributors were ‘pinned’ to the consultation map.
The results show that the majority of people who took part in the consultation believe a new road linking the A47 to Broadland Northway (previously the Northern Distributor Road) would help tackle transport issues in the area. This option was selected more than three times as much as the next most popular option, ‘Improving existing roads’.
The full breakdown of responses to this question, showing how many people selected each option, is as follows. For clarity's sake, as we've been asked about this, people could select as many options as they wanted:
People were asked ‘Although one potential option to tackle transport issues in this area is to build a new road we are committed to examining all of the possible options. Which options would you like us to explore?’
People who took part in the consultation were also asked to identify which transport problems were a particular issue in the area to the west of Norwich. The top three issues people selected were:
People were also asked which issues the County Council should consider when planning any transport improvements in the area. The top three issues people selected were:
While we've got the results of the options people selected in the consultation, further work to analyse the ‘free text’ information given as part of the consultation is still ongoing, including going through the 773 comments people ‘pinned’ to a consultation map to highlight problems in specific locations.
We'll use the information from the consultation, as well as other data and evidence, to help propose some options to improve travel in the area to the west of Norwich. A further consultation on these is likely to take place later this year and we'll be in touch to let you know more about this nearer the time.
Please do have a look at the full report when it becomes available later this morning as this has further details which you might find interesting.
If the Norwich Western Link consultation were a pub, we'd be ringing the bell for last orders right now.
If that analogy wasn't clear enough, there are only a few hours left to have your say on transport issues to the west of the city as the consultation closes today - so anyone who hasn't already responded needs to do so before midnight tonight (Tuesday, 3 July) or they will lose the chance to do so.
Once the consultation closes, we'll analyse the responses over the summer and let people know the results later this year and what, if anything, we propose to do to tackle any of the transport issues identified. Updates will be published on the Norfolk County Council website at www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl and on these news pages.
Thank you to everyone who has already responded and helped spread the word about the consultation, it's very much appreciated.
If you or someone you know wants to respond to the Norwich Western Link consultation, don't spare the horses. You have just over a week to have your say before the consultation closes at midnight on Tuesday, 3 July.
Over the last seven weeks, more than 1,200 people have shared their thoughts and experiences with us and 1,100 people have come to see us at the 10 consultation events so far. The most recent of these last week were at Costessey on Monday and at the Norwich Research Park on Wednesday, both interesting and very worthwhile days - thank you to everyone who took the time to come and see us.
Our final consultation event will take place tomorrow from 10.30am - 8pm at Hellesdon Parish Office on Wood View Road. We've really appreciated the conversations we've had with so many of you at the events so far and we'd like to go out on a high note, so if you're in the area, please come and see us, ask any questions you have and respond to the consultation in person if you like.
Following some feedback about the Norwich Western Link webpages, we've uploaded a map showing the study area - you can find this here . The rectangle on the map shows the area we're focusing on with this project but we're very aware that transport issues don't have neat boundaries and any options that we come up with to tackle problems in this area are likely to affect other parts of Norfolk too. So we really do want anyone and everyone to respond to the consultation, the more the merrier.
On that note, please do spread the word about the consultation if you haven't done so already - there really is no substitute for word of mouth when it comes to making people aware of something they may have a vested interest in.
Hope you're enjoying the lovely British summer (for once, no sarcasm intended!) and, if you can tear yourself away from your barbecue/bat and ball/deckchair, it would be lovely to see you tomorrow in Hellesdon.
Come and see us at Easton Village Hall between 10.30am and 8pm tomorrow at our fourth consultation event for the Norwich Western Link consultation. You can ask us any questions you have, look through some information and maps, and respond to the consultation in person. We're a friendly bunch and hope to see lots of you there tomorrow.
If you can't make it tomorrow, there are five further consultation events being held throughout June or you can of course respond to the consultation online. You can find out more about the events and the online consultation via www.norfolk.gov.uk/nwl .
We've had around 600 responses to the consultation now, which is good but we're sure many more people have an opinion on transport to the west of Norwich than that. We need as many responses and opinions as possible so that we can consider these when coming up with any options designed to improve travel in this area and tackle any problems that exist.
So if you know someone who would want to have their say on this matter please mention the consultation to them and let them know how they can get involved. Thank you!