Labour now has time to engage properly over Valley Gardens and Duke’s Mound

For 18 months we have tried to encourage the Labour administration to rethink their plans for Valley Gardens phase 3.

All of us want to see the Old Steine area regenerated and sustainable travel enhanced but most have grave concerns about the negative economic and environmental impacts of the current design.

Labour caused the unnecessary delay to phase 1 and 2 that has led to its chaotic implementation so far as putting timing pressure on phase 3.

Early last year, after a flawed consultation and the dismissal of worried resident and business petitions and deputations, the plans were forced through under the pretext that a delay would jeopardise government funding.

Roll forward eight months and the council entered secret talks with the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership (the LEP), which brokers the government funding, to ask for a funding extension. This completely undermined their own rationale for the rush.

At the same time, copious representations and submissions have been made that prove the council’s own business case seriously underestimated the economic disbenefits and negative impacts relating to traffic movement, congestion and air quality.

Labour knows this but to admit it would render their business case worthless.

The council has admitted at a committee meeting that altering the Duke’s Mound junction is critical to their plans to remove the Aquarium roundabout.

But it refuses to subject the proposals for Duke’s Mound to the proper scrutiny of the Environment, Transport and Sustainability (ETS) Committee and to allow meaningful consultation and full public involvement.

Instead, Labour has buried this key transport interface within the planning application for changes being planned for Black Rock hoping that it slips through unnoticed.

The council is both the applicant and planning authority – and it only takes a few moments of reading the transport submission to see how confused and contradictory it is.

As the applicant, the council states that Duke’s Mound only works if Madeira Drive is retained as per the existing two-way arrangement at the Aquarium roundabout.

Yet at the same time, the council as highways authority proposes removing the roundabout and making the west end of Madeira Drive one-way.

In a letter to me, the Labour chair of the ETS Committee says that she has been assured the council has considered everything. This single stark example alone leaves me worried that the chair may not be across the detail of her brief.

As a further example of secrecy and questionable behaviour, the council is holding an “invite only” meeting on Thursday 19 March at the Yellowave Clubhouse in Madeira Drive for “some local traders” to discuss Madeira Drive traffic management options.

Oddly this single closed meeting will take place two days after the consultation period on the planning application closes.

Councillors were not advised or invited – nor have any other stakeholders in the city been.

If anybody wanted to write the manual for how a public body might avoid, prevent and subvert public – residents and businesses – involvement over key decisions that affect their lives, they would have to look no further than how Labour is conducting matters around Valley Gardens phase 3 and Duke’s Mound.

When the newly appointed Labour chair of the ETS Committee states that the experienced and well-respected chair of the Tourism Alliance, speaking for the city’s businesses, is completely wrong about the negative economic impact this present plan will have, her administration clearly is not listening.

However, Labour only get away with this because of the Green Party’s support.

North Street is the seventh most polluted street in the country outside of London – and by the council’s admission, it is because of buses.

But the interlinked impact of Valley Gardens phase 3, Duke’s Mound, the A259, North Street and Madeira Drive in respect to all forms of transport has had no overlapping comprehensive traffic modelling.

We have absolutely no idea what might happen when all this comes together. Nobody has a science-based prediction and there is no appreciation of how traffic might displace.

In short, the council is completely clueless as to what will happen. Why has this vital research not been carried out?

Equally, there has been no “environmental impact assessment”. We have no idea what air quality or pollution impacts might occur.

We are told that it will be monitored after everything has been done.

We need only look at North Street, Lewes Road, the A259 and Rottingdean to witness what a failure to conduct due diligence in advance looks, sounds and smells like!

So, at the council’s upcoming Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee meeting, the Conservatives are tabling a motion requesting full environmental impact and traffic modelling and displacement assessments across the whole area including bus congestion in North Street and the Old Steine.

The funding extension – if necessary to 2025 – means that there is no longer any excuse for not carrying out this essential research over the next few months.

If Labour is not for turning, then the Green Party will be the “kingmakers”. We hope that a party claiming to champion environmental issues will want to make sure these projects do not make the situation worse but moreover improve things.

Perhaps now it is time for the Greens to stop supporting Labour’s lip service to tackling climate change.

And just as the Greens rejoiced over the Heathrow expansion legal judgment, perhaps they should challenge the Labour administration to justify Valley Gardens phase 3 and Duke’s Mound in accordance with Labour policies and pledges.

It would be strange for the Greens to support complex and interlinked transport projects without wanting to know how the environment might be affected.

Now that there is no longer pressure to rush through a botched scheme, the Greens must surely agree that the time has come to progress the Valley Gardens project in the way it was originally conceived and to deliver a scheme that will be the pride of our city for a generation or more.

We hope to have their support.

Councillor Lee Wares is a member of Brighton and Hove City Council. He speaks for the Conservatives on the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee.