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Government questions East of England Plan's advocacy of NDR 17 March 2005 - Yesterday, the Eastern Region Green Party unveiled its highly critical response to - and detailed alternative version of - the East of England Plan. Today, the Government has posted its own responses to the East of England Plan on the Go-East website. The responses are couched in much more 'diplomatic' language than the Green Party's responses, but they highlight many of the same issues, one of which is the Norwich Northern Distributor Road (NDR). Go-East raises a question about the 'realism of the cost assessments' for the NDR - exactly as Norfolk Green Party has done, repeatedly. And they refuse to support the Regional Transport Strategy and housing strategy, instead confining themselves to these critical questions and observations. Said Councillor Rupert Read, Green transport spokesperson and Norfolk Green Party Press Officer: "Clearly the Government isn’t too impressed with the quality of the Norwich sub-region strategy. And in particular, they doubt whether either the housing targets or the road-building programme are sensible or sustainable. This is yet another setback for Norfolk County Council's hopelessly out-of-date plans for Norwich and Norfolk." Councillor Adrian Ramsay, Green Parliamentary candidate for Norwich South, added: "The government's chickens are coming home to roost here. They have insisted on overheating the economy of the south-east and East Anglia - and now they are suddenly starting to realise the potentially disastrous consequences of this for the countryside of this region, much which is at dire risk of being paved over for roads and houses! It is time that genuinely Green solutions - including a shift in any expansion of the housing stock to parts of the country which are not already overheating under the strain - were taken up, instead." Links
To read the response of Go-East to the East of England Plan, click here.
To read the Eastern Green Party's proposed changes to the East of England plan, click here.
To read the summary of the RSS as it affects the Norwich area on the website of the East of England Regional Authority's (EERA), click here.
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