The Norwich Society objects to the granting of planning permission for the construction of the Norwich Western Link Road, for the following reasons:

1. New road building within the Greater Norwich area can only be justified where it is set within a fully integrated and sustainable transport strategy for this city region, accompanied by a comprehensive set of action plans which have a realistic prospect of implementation. This is not the case at the present time.

The County Council’s Transport for Norwich Strategy (2021) ought to be providing a sustainable way forward, but in practice the action planning has devoted a hugely disproportionate amount of its attention and resources to the Western Link Road alone. Little progress is being made in many other essential transport areas, where tokensim abounds, and much is currently unfunded.

2. The construction of the proposed Western Link Road without other essential transport initiatives would be a seriously retrograde step. It would actively discourage the modal shift towards public transport and active travel that is urgently required in response to the climate crisis and the need to tackle unhealthy lifestyles and support the local economy.

3. Were the proposed Link Road to proceed in isolation, any predicted reductions in ‘traffic congestion’ and air pollution within the city itself would prove to be of only temporary benefit. It is now widely understood from decades of experience that the road would itself stimulate new car-based journeys and bring about renewed vehicular congestion in time.

4. The evidence does not support the assertion that a Link Road of this magnitude and disproportionate cost is essential for the economic wellbeing of Greater Norwich, nor that it is a cost-effective means of stimulating economic prosperity. It would, for example, encourage longer distance car-based commuting out of (and across) Greater Norwich as much as into it. The future economic success of Greater Norwich relies on increased localism and on the development of enhanced public transport systems providing frequent, cheap and reliable access for all, and on the further development of attractive and safe cycling and walking routes.

5. The environmentally destructive nature of any major road intruding into a sensitive river flood plain has been highlighted by numerous expert bodies and the Norwich Society does not have confidence in the real effectiveness of the proposed mitigation measures.

The Norwich Society recognises the need to find solutions to the problems that have been created by the construction of an incomplete northern distributor road and that this may require at least a measure of road construction and traffic management measures as part of an integrated transport solution. Rat-running car traffic is undoubtedly blighting the lives of some communities and necessary heavy goods vehicle movements are similarly being forced onto totally inappropriate rural lanes. Solutions to these issues can surely be found by more modest measures, without the damage that the present plans also pose to the environment of the Wensum valley.

The Norwich Society calls upon the County Council to withdraw the current planning application and to engage with the new Secretary of State for Transport and with local communities on alternative plans that would prove both more environmentally sustainable and substantially more cost effective than the envisaged Link.