Deputy Minister on A483 junctions : “adding large housing estates right on a congested junction is just asking for more trouble”

Welsh Government are looking to developers to construct ‘exemplar’ housing that no longer force people to drive by ‘building in low car ownership from the start’.

The comments came as Wrexham.com met the Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters MS in Saltney last week and asked him about the plans for the large development on Lower Berse Farm, the LDP, and the planned upgrades on the A483 junctions that were recently scrapped.

The Deputy Minister said of the development and the recent ‘roads review’ on the junction plan, “I have just driven the junctions to see it for myself. I think adding large housing estates right on a congested junction is just asking for more trouble. I think the decision we made is the right one and for the right reasons. The question now is, what do we do instead? That’s not something we come up with a flippant answer for, that’s got to be thought through and worked through.

“Welsh Government is bringing together the housing side, the planning side, the economic development side, and we are going to sit down with the council to come up with some practical plans. It is not easy, because the options are quite tight and difficult but we need to find a way that allows development, but doesn’t add to traffic and doesn’t create further emissions. This is hard stuff, because we’ve always done it a certain way and people’s ‘common sense’ patterns follow what we’ve always done.

“The point of the roads review was to say, ‘we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done’. Climate change is not something that’s going to happen at some point in the future. It’s happening already, and it’s going to get worse. Transport makes a significant contribution to that, so transport needs to do things differently. How we do it differently. That’s what we’ve got to work through.”

We pointed to pre-planning proposals from Redrow which state as the ‘existing wastewater treatment facility for Wrexham cannot at present accept any additional wastewater flows due to problems with phosphorous pollution’ so they are proposing to build a dedicated ‘state of the art treatment facility’ on the development to clean wastewater – including removing phosphorous. We asked the Minister if such proposals indicated there was willingness from developers to resolve wider issues, including creating more active travel options, and if there was anything firm coming down the line from Welsh Government in terms of related policies.

The Minister replied, ​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​”We want to be pragmatic about this, we have targets to build more homes, we want to build more homes in the right place. The trick we need to do is not to build homes that have got two car parking spaces each, that are not connected to public transport, that aren’t connected to active travel, where effectively you are forcing people who live there to drive. That’s what we need to get away from now. Our planning policy is quite clear on that. Our guidance is quite clear on that – and yet developers are not there yet.

“We want exemplar schemes and to build in low car ownership from the start, but that’s not going to be easy, but it is a process of change, and we’ve got to start somewhere. Our view is that time is now.

We pointed to promises made in Wrexham in 2018 by the then Economy Minister, with the direct link back then between large developments in the LDP and junction improvements, with the work included in the then three year finance plan. We noted the comments were made in another Welsh Government funded project – the Wrexham business hub that has since announced it will be closing down – and asked why should the people of Wrexham believe a Welsh Government Minister telling us what the future will hold under their plans when previous promises have not been met.

Lee Waters MS replied, “Facts change. People voted to leave the EU, we had Brexit and the money that was funding the Business Wales activity has disappeared, the UK Government said they were going to replace it, we wouldn’t be a penny worse off and that was a lie. As a result, we don’t have the funding that we were using to put those support services in place. That’s not our doing. People have had a promise broken by the UK Government.

“On the money for the (junction improvement) schemes. The trouble is we’ve had 12 years of austerity cuts, our capital budget this year has gone down by 8% in real terms, the money simply isn’t there to do all the things that we want to do. So schemes have been announced with a price tag next to them, but there isn’t actually any money in the budget to pay for them.

“Others have made the case, ‘can we have that money for something else in the area?’ Well, the money wasn’t there in the first place is the problem. That is frustrating for people and I completely understand that. We don’t have the money, nor do we have the carbon headroom to keep doing the schemes that were on the block. That’s why the roads review made the recommendations they did. They didn’t kill them all, they changed the number, and they’ve suggested for other schemes, ‘here’s a set of rules that we need to follow’.

“And, as we’ve done with the Llanbedr scheme, we’ve come back and said, Okay, we’re not going to build the bypass you wanted but we will build another road – a slimmed down road – which also at the same time gets active travel and safe pavements in the village itself.”

“So the solution still is road based, but a different type of road, one which helps us get the broader package of measures we need. This is far more nuanced than has been presented, it is not an end to roads. It is a an end to large, multi lane dual carriageway through ancient woodlands. That can’t be part of the future, we need to be creative and find other ways to deal with today’s problems without making it worse for tomorrow.”

As he mentioned the nuance of plans being lost we asked if there had been a communications failure, as a ‘total ban on roadbuilding’ claim in Wales – with no nuance – appears to have cut through publicly on Twitter, and is also widely circulating in closed social media groups, Whatsapp forwards and the like.

The Minister again reiterated that it was not true there had been a total ban on road building, adding, “It is clearly deliberate misrepresentation by our political opponents of what we’re intending. I’m afraid the tone of politics is getting more shrill and wrapped up into culture wars of trying to find red button issues that can wind people up. That’s exactly what the Tories are doing.

“You know, Andrew RT Davies’ twitter feed is a case study in how not to conduct intelligent, rational public debate. The trouble is, it doesn’t bear scrutiny. So yes, they can say that, and some people will take that at face value – but it is not true – and ultimately, people will see it’s not true.”

Top pic: Lee Waters MS after visiting a site of active travel enhancements in Saltney Ferry last week, while announcing more funding for further schemes. Wrexham Council did not respond to comment on that.