Consortium of one Landowner, a Freight Specialist and a Financier have put together an audacious proposal to create a "Strategic Rail Freight Interchange" on designated Greenbelt and green field agricultural land in South Staffordshire. It is bordered by the M6 Motorway; the A5 Watling Street; the A449 Wolverhampton to Stafford Road; and Vicarage Road. Immediately affecting the South Staffordshire areas of Gailey / Four Ashes / Calf Heath and indirectly the villages of Coven, Brewood and the historic market town of Penkridge. They have called this WMI or West Midlands Interchange.
It is not in the West Midlands but uses the title as a marketing tool.
We have used the actual location as designation for the opposition - since that is where it is.
The scale of the proposal is huge. Some 290 Hectares (743200 square meters) of green belt would be destroyed to site the huge warehouses, new road & rail links and commercial parking. The suggested thousands of workers would need to be bused in from elsewhere. (South Staffs has virtually no unemployment). Thousands of additional heavy lorries and vans would clog the already bursting local road system. Two new road islands with HGV lanes to generate traffic jams on the A5 and A449.
Fourteen gigantic sheds up to 38 meters high (125 ft.)!
Large lifting equipment, gantries and intense floodlighting are all part of scheme.
Noise from HGV movements, reversing sirens, Rail shunting, Lifting cranes, together with the warning sirens used for industrial traffic...on a 24 hour basis.
A desire by government to promote rail freight (now that coal transportation has almost disappeared) caused a piece of planning law to be published that allows proposals for rail served freight hubs (interchanges) of a certain size, to be classed as "strategic" and be determined by the Secretary of State (via his Planning Inspectorate) - bypassing the normal district and county council planning procedures. Unfortunately, by leaving the siting of these strategic developments to market forces and private investors, a number of completely inappropriate locations have been chosen in a dash to capitalize on this loophole.
The adjacent expansion of Four Ashes Industrial Estate (the Bericote site) and a mineral extraction scheme, also act as wedge driven into the green belt.
Initially there were two options for the site layout - exhibited in the hope of getting a preferred layout by the public!
After a private showing to Council Officers just before Christmas 2016, the layout shown below was advertised as the final proposal. (The high cost, central railway link option has been quietly shelved). It may change again in July 2017 when there is a Statutory Public Exhibition.
This project has been secretly prepared for many months before it was publicly revealed in the May 2016. Since then, there have been an informal pubic exhibitions in June/July to gauge and manipulate the public response.
Both the County Council and District Council have been aware of the project for some time before it was revealed to the public. Some members ... much longer!
The timetable is for a formal (statutory) exhibition in July 2017 and the official application to the Secretary of State and Planning Inspectorate in November 2017.
THE PROPOSAL
