Swindon Council's bid for Thamesdown Drive extension unsuccessful

Plans for a road linking Thamesdown Drive with Great Western Way have suffered a massive blow after a bid for government funding was rejected.

Swindon Borough Council, working in partnership with Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (SWLEP), submitted a bid for £1.27 million from the Department of Transport’s Large Local Schemes Fund in order to pay for a detailed design, all the environmental surveys, and the preparation of both a planning application and business case.

Campaign group TDEX believes that the failure of the bid was due to a proper business case not being presented by the council.

It was hoped that, if successful, a further bid would have been submitted to the Government for full funding support of the £44 million scheme in two years’ time.

The bid for funding formed part of the Council’s Pledge 4 to “make a case to government to invest in a Thamesdown Drive extension”.

However, despite receiving positive feedback from the Department for Transport regarding the strength of the case for the scheme, the bid for funding proved unsuccessful, up against 55 similarly strong submissions for other schemes across the country. In total, the submitted bids sought more than three times the available funding, and only a dozen schemes were successful in this round of bidding.

Due to the feedback received from the Government, the Council will continue to explore options for the development and delivery of the scheme.

The Council will carry out a Transport Strategy Review during 2017, which will provide an opportunity to review the objectives of the relief road.

The review will also identify any alternative options that are available to meet these objectives as well as look at the options for improving the transport network in West Swindon to address current and future problems.

The views of the local community will be sought as part of the review, including those of the West Swindon Forum, and a wide range of transport issues will be explored including the need for new highways infrastructure.

The Thamesdown Drive to Barnfield relief road was put forward as a preferred solution as it would alleviate significant congestion during morning and evening peak periods along Akers Way and Mead Way and discourage drivers from rat-running through residential areas in order to by-pass the congested routes.

Future development at nearby Tadpole Farm and Ridgeway Farm is also likely to increase traffic levels in the area over the coming years.

The Swindon Transport Strategy forecasts that demand on the borough’s highway network will increase by 48 per cent by 2026 as a direct result of the 22,000 new homes that will be constructed in Swindon over the next 10 years.

Cllr Keith Williams, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for StreetSmart, Highways and Transport, said: “I am naturally disappointed our funding bid fell short as I felt we made a very strong case to the Government. The good news is that the Department for Transport gave us some encouraging feedback and we intend to build on that to look at alternative ways of providing this much needed relief road.

“As a West Swindon councillor and resident I am acutely aware of the current pressures on our local road network and I want to assure people living in the west and north of the town that we will do everything we can to alleviate congestion in the area.

“The Transport Strategy Review is an important part of that and we want to work with the local community over the coming year to identify some clear goals for keeping traffic moving on our roads.”

Kevin Fisher, of Shaw Residents Association (SRA) which was part of  TDEX a consortium of seven associations trying to get the extension built, released a statement via the group's Facebook page in response to the news. The statement said: "Swindon Borough Council (SBC) call it an ‘initial’ bid and yet, the project has been ongoing for decades. Indeed SBC met Chancellor Osborne back in July 2013 in a failed attempt to get funding.

"Members of Shaw Residents Association worked hard to ensure the ‘business plan’ submitted for this latest futile attempt was as good as it could be. Sadly, we reported in December 2015 that we were unable to support the report or the process in which it was compiled."

The December 2015 SRA statement said: "When the SRA agreed to participate in this work, we believed we were signing up for the development of a proper business case, justifying the need for the road based on current traffic volumes. It is now over two years since the first failed funding bid and in that time a third ‘route option analysis’ report, coming to the same conclusions as those made in 2008, has been produced.

"The sad reality is that the SRA’s participation has simply enabled political representatives to state in public that ‘residents groups are supportive.’ This has not been time well spent for a voluntary group and has left us frustrated and saddened that our contributions have not been valued.

"Without a compelling business case and proposals that are incomplete, we fear SBC’s funding applications will continue to be rejected by government."