Welcome to our Westbury Bypass independent information web-site.

View Wilts County Council's would-be highway through the heart of the country.

With a change for the even worse with ugly secret gantries on embankments.

In July 2007, the Government called in the scheme for a Planning Inquiry.

Wiltshire County Council's outdated A350 road project is not in the new set
of transport priorities recommended by the South West EiP Panel Report.

Wiltshire County Council has failed to pre-empt this with a rush start.

Government letters have ordered a full inquiry into the WCC eastern route, which, as noted in the GOSW letter, is in potential conflict with many policies. And it is not in the proposed Regional Spatial Strategy for the South West.

A reasonable way forward would be to properly consider worthwhile solutions.

WCC's far western route is actually only a third longer than its eastern scheme. The extra length was for a bypass of the longest A350 tailbacks at Yarnbrook.

Westbury main-line railway station desperately needs a decent access road.

A western route alongside the railway track, to the station, road-rail freight terminal and the industrial estates, is shorter than the eastern bypass scheme. It would be of significantly less cost.   It would not be expensively contending with environmental difficulties.   It would be a solution for the 21st century.

If road-to-rail freight interchange at the Westbury railway hub was developed, with obvious environmental benefits, the HGV congestion would be cut anyway.

This web-site reflects the genuine local opinion about a solution at Westbury.
In the last survey ever conducted by Wiltshire County Council, up to 79% of Westbury area residents with a view were opposed to the eastern route.    As few as 21% were in favour of the so-called 'preferred' eastern bypass scheme. Read a summarised factual analysis of the Westbury Bypass Opinion Survey. Overwhelmingly, 75% of the local public response wanted a western route.

Who would honestly want a main highway to be built here?

For this is where the unpopular eastern road is actually routed.

Its planning application is 2400 obscure pages.   But one crass council.

Here are WCC's simulated impressions of its intrusive rural highway plan.

This is at a time when rational solutions for West Wiltshire are really required.

The eastern bypass development is opportunist gambling, still without funding.

This wrong road through the best areas would mess-up footpaths & bridleways.

Most of the responses to WCC's 2005 consultation are objections to its scheme.

Most of the responses to WCC's 2007 consultation are objections to its scheme.

WCC's expedient eastern route in the countryside is actually full of big problems.

Environmental mitigation concepts, which were hastily put together to meet the political timing of WCC's '05 planning application, have proved to be inadequate.

Tailbacks at adjacent Yarnbrook, far worse than in Westbury, are being ignored.

It is worth pointing out that little has been done to re-direct long distance lorries to/from the M4 by other than the A350 - as approved BBSCS recommendations.

WCC’s HGV road map still portrays the A350 as a strategic lorry route, cynically encouraging heavy trucks through villages where there will be no traffic relief.

WCC's own route flows prove that an eastern Westbury bypass would impose yet more HGVs on to other communities which already suffer twice as many.

Ludicrously, rail freight integration is WCC's own policy.     See 'Freightway'.

Why not have a sustainable solution of an integrated western access road alongside the railway, routed directly to the station and industrial areas?

"New WCC highway plans put nature first"  - if we don't laugh, we'd cry.

Thank you for joining us on our walk along the eastern scheme route.

Come to some of our further fund-raising events through 2008.

Please keep helping to save the valley from the builders.