Friends of the Earth Birmingham Action Briefing Oct 98/Nov 98

BNRR Latest

The campaign against this destructive road continues.

On July 29th the first part of the legal process came to an end with Lord Justice Sullivan declaring that both Midland Expressway Limited (MEL) and the Government had acted illegally in not allowing the public to have access to "certain" parts of the concession agreement.

The word 'certain' is key in that he did not indicate that the whole document should be made public. This was a great victory for the people but not great enough. Indeed the Judge indicated that it was up to Mr Prescott to decide which parts of the agreement he should make public. This is a great disappointment because we may get all of the concession agreement except the sections we really need, namely the compensation clauses buried within it.

There is a card enclosed with this newsletter calling on your MP to pressure John Prescott for full disclosure of the BNRR concession agreement. Please send one to your MP today. Thanks.

Interestingly the Government accepted the result of the case. MEL did not and as such have appealed the decision, as have the applicants on behalf of the Alliance against the BNRR. The reason for the applicants appealing is that they want full disclosure of the document. MEL on the other hand want these Public Private deals to be done behind closed doors out of sight of the public who in the long term may end up footing the bill for these expensive, shareholder pocket lining, projects.

An interesting note here is the comparison of the BNRR with the Skye road bridge. In both cases the projects were brought forward by a partnership of a private company and a state controlled body. In the BNRR Autostrada is an Italian State owned operator of toll roads. In the Skye Bridge case the state owned group was German and it was through them that The Highways Agency eventually purchased the last of the buildings at Moneymore. They have proceeded to take the residents of Moneymore to the High Court seeking leave to evict. They were successful in this aim on September 10th. This camp could now be evicted at any time.

If you are interested in finding out more about the camp why not pay a visit to Greenwood Camp adjacent to the ARC gravel works off the A38 Sutton Coldfield bypass @ 1 mile south of the Weeford interchange with the A5. All visitors are very welcome.

Sally Fletcher