Have your say on the plans for bypass
A VIRTUAL village hall has been created online to enable townsfolk to remotely thumb through detailed plans and statistics that will help council bosses complete the first stage of delivering an A515 bypass.
The consultation, which would normally have kicked off with a public event in the town, has been held back and forced online by the coronavirus pandemic – but it was still able to begin on Monday.
This important phase of the scheme gives the public their first chance to comment on the town’s transport and traffic issues, and to pick a route they would prefer the bypass to take, should it go ahead.
According to Derbyshire County Council, we are now on step seven of nine steps of the initial stage of developing a bypass.
Steps eight and nine will follow, and will see council bosses poring over the responses to the consultation to develop the options and then stage one will be rounded off by “developing and scoping” the better performing options.
Stage two will then see more appraisals and the building of a solid business case, which will be required to attract funding, and stage three will be the actual building of a bypass.
The consultation can be found by visiting ashbourne.consultation.ai and it will be open until Friday, December 18. Copies of the consultation documents are also being posted out to every household in the town.
The consultation is asking people to pick their favoured route for the relief road from three distinct options.
The first western route to consider is Westbound Option A, which, as with Route B, leaves Mayfield Road and navigates around the sewage works, waste and recycling centre, allotments and cemetery and plots a course through fields close to the Bentley Brook, crossing Mappleton Lane and then the Tissington Trail, meeting the A515 near to the junctions with Spend Lane and Sandybrook Lodges Holiday Park.
Westbound Option B is a shorter route that also navigates around the sewage works and neighbouring sites, and splits off from route B to plot a slightly more southerly course, running through fields behind Spire Close, Belle Vue Road and then Northcliffe, before crossing Mappleton Lane close to the Tissington Trail car park.
From here it runs through a further strip of fields behind North Avenue and joins the A515 just after the crest of Buxton Hill.
The Eastern option is a much longer and more expensive route, but it begins in the Airfield, which is currently in the early phases of redevelopment, and this would pass through JCB’S testing site before crossing Bradley Moor and then the A517.
After cutting through a further swathe of fields it would cross the River Henmore just east of the Shrovetide goal at the former Sturston Mill, before traversing another series of fields, eventually crossing Offcote Lane and the B5035 at The Punch, then over the Eastern End of Windmill Lane to eventually link up with the A515 just south of the Spend Lane junction.
Councillor Barry Lewis, leader of Derbyshire County Council, said: “The online consultation is now open and I hope that everyone who lives or travels through Ashbourne will take the time to take part.
“There’s a large amount of information online to have a look at.”