Petitions and Public Address
This Council meeting will be held virtually in order to conform with current guidelines regarding social distancing. Normally requests to speak at this public meeting are required by 9 am on the day preceding the published date of the meeting. However, during the current situation and to facilitate these new arrangements we are asking that requests to speak are submitted by no later than 9am four working days before the meeting i.e. 9 am on 3 February 2021. Requests to speak should be sent to deborah.miller@oxfordshire.gov.uk together with a written statement of your presentation to ensure that if the technology fails then your views can still be taken into account. A written copy of your statement can be provided no later than 9 am 2 working days before the meeting.
Where a meeting is held virtually and the addressee is unable to participate virtually their written submission will be accepted.
Written submissions should be no longer than 1 A4 sheet.
Decision:
Council received the following Petiton and Public Address:
Petition
A Petition from Ms Jean Conway on behalf of Campaign 20’s Plenty for Oxfordshire requesting clarification on how 20mph would be facilitated and rolled out across the county.
Public Address
Mr Chris Hancock, Appleford-on-Thames Parish Council regarding the relief road from Didcot to Clifton Hampden.
Minutes:
Council received the following Petition and Public Address:
Ms Jean Conway, Campaign Leader 20’s Plenty for Oxfordshire presented a Petition requesting that Oxfordshire County Council take the 20 mph initiative forward and create a coherent strategic plan that rolled out 20mph in groups of defined areas with one TRO per area so as to minimise costs. They further sought that OCC fund the initiative so that facilitation was not based on the wealth of an area.
Public Address
Mr Chris Hancock, Appleford-on-Thames Parish Council addressed the Council in relation to a section of the proposed relief road, part of the HIF1 scheme approved by Cabinet on 21 July 2020. The section ran north of Didcot Power Station to a new bridge crossing over the River Thames.
The Parish Council had surveyed the views of all residents in Appleford and were instructed to speak for them. He explained that Appleford did not object to the principle of a road between Didcot to Culham, they accepted that traffic and future development will require this. However, they were concerned that the current alignment for that section of the road presented serious consequences for residents living adjacent to this road. The proposed route required the road, cycleway, and footway to bridge over Appleford Sidings. This was a private freight railway siding used by Hanson and others and would require that the total highway would have to be raised on embankments, higher than the roofline of adjacent properties, for a considerable distance either side of the bridge.
Subsequent to the OCC consultation exercise in April last, Hanson secured planning approval, to triple the size of the sidings by building extra tracks. These would be built this year. This was not included in the road proposal and considerably increased the cost, size, and complexity of a road bridge. The Three major impacts of this high-level road would be felt as noise, traffic pollution and visual intrusion.
They anticipated noise from four sources, road traffic over the bridge, train movements below the bridge, interaction of the train movements and the bridge (reflected noise) and the vibration of the bridge structure. They felt that the cumulative effect of noise would be most severely felt for residents of Main Road in Appleford, facing the sidings.
It was recognised that dealing with vehicle noise from an elevated road was twice as difficult as dealing with noise from a road at ground level. Attenuation by the ground surface is lost. Secondly, dealing with the vehicle emissions, and particulates from an elevated road was considerably more difficult than for a road at ground level. Appleford was upwind of the proposed road, they expressed concern about the health effects.
Thirdly, they felt that a raised road would dominate the skyline to the west of Appleford and increase the prominence in the landscape. Noise and pollution screens would add considerably more to the height. The possible construction costs were large. Similar road bridges elsewhere in the county had cost between £15M ... view the full minutes text for item 4