Their report describes the NDR as a 'relatively expensive scheme', and points out that the scheme 'does not score on congestion', and thus fails to qualify as a scheme that can reasonably expect to be put forward to the Government as worthy of central financial backing.

Norwich Green Party therefore questions why the Assembly approved the NDR scheme after all and suggests it is a result of pure political horsetrading: Norfolk County Council has begged other Counties in the region to back its ‘flagship’ scheme, and has done deals with them behind the scenes to get them on board.

Green Party Transport Spokesperson Councillor Rupert Read said: “What is the ‘East of England Regional Assembly’? It is an unelected body consisting primarily of appointees from various County Councils across the eastern side of England. It is a quango, whose members cook up deals behind closed doors to back each other’s pet schemes. That is how the NDR got approved by this ‘Regional Assembly’, despite failing to meet the Assembly’s own criteria for being a regional priority! What a disgraceful state of affairs.”

Added Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Norwich South, Councillor Adrian Ramsay, “There is at present an unacceptable democratic deficit in East Anglian politics. It is simply unacceptable for an all-appointed quango to make important decisions about transport priorities – and about many other important matters – in our region. Either the ‘Regional Assembly’ should be a proper elected Assembly, like in Wales, or it should be abolished and its powers returned to elected local authorities.”

Councillor Adrian Holmes, Norwich Green Party Economy and Finance spokesperson, said, “The price-tag for the NDR has now risen to £140 million. As Alan Wenban Smith’s independent report recently stated, there is no way that the Government will stump up that kind of money for a scheme does not fit the criteria as a regional priority. So Norfolk County Council and the ‘Regional Assembly’ are only postponing the inevitable: sooner or later, the NDR plan will die a death. It would show much more political and civic responsibility were the County Council to give up the NDR now, rather than to continue to mislead local people and spend large amounts of money on consultancy over route plans. It would be far more productive for the County Council to commit to spending just a fraction of the £140m it would cost to build an NDR on the much-needed major improvements to public transport and on far better facilities for cyclists and pedestrians.”