17/6/2003

A “conspiracy of silence”- stretching from Cynog Dafis to Wayne David has gripped Plaid and Labour over the issue of the Bargoed Bypass, Wales Green Party claimed today.

Bargoed-based Green campaigner and Johannesburg Earth-Summit veteran Matt Wootton said “Despite overwhelming evidence from central government and Caerphilly Council itself that this scheme would not only fail in its stated aims but would have a powerful negative effect on the area’s economy, local councilors are flatly refusing to believe that their own facts are correct, and even Cynog Dafis and Wayne David are actively silencing rather than addressing dissent. The councilors cannot psychologically accept that their ticket to re-election might have been invalidated by the facts, so instead they’re putting Bargoed on a road to ruin”.

The councilors are also denying that the Retail Development Plateau for a supermarket that is part of the bypass scheme is a PFI, despite the recommendations of the Donaldsons Report presented to Caerphilly council cabinet on the 11th March, and the assertion in the officer’s report last Wednesday when the Planning Application was approved that the retail development plateau would be built with PFI. Matt Wootton said “The scrutiny of this scheme has been so superficial that none of the parties have noticed the clear stated intention that the scheme will be partly PFI. No wonder Labour and Plaid are angry at Wales Green Party’s opposition to the scheme: they don’t realise how harmful it will be because they haven’t bothered to check their facts in the 20 years since the scheme was first conceived.”

In a letter in the Western Mail (Sat, 14th June), Wayne David accused Wales Green Party of ignoring that the Bargoed Bypass is vital to open up the top part of the Rhymney Valley, and to regenerate the town centre. However, the council’s own Environmental Impact Assessment show that despite the benefits from time-savings (although the bypass would be longer than the high street and would take longer than traveling down the high street at 25 mph), the road still has a Net Present Value of minus £10.6 to minus £12 million. This has led a world-renowned transport expert - Dr John Whitelegg, Professor of Sustainable Transport at the Stockholm Institute for the Environment at the University of York - to call it “the worst road scheme ever”. Friends of the Earth Cymru have expressed puzzlement as to why the scheme should be prioritised.

Furthermore, Government research (the DETR’s 1998 study The Impact of Large Foodstores on Market Towns and District Centres) clearly shows that a large edge-of-centre supermarket such as is catered for in the building (with PFI money) of a “retail development plateau” as part of the bypass scheme, would harm trade of small shops by 13-50%, increase vacancies by around 30%, and decrease overall employment.

Plaid Cymru’s director of policy Cynog Dafis, despite the 10 000 word report of local campaign group Don’t Bypass Bargoed (www.dontbypassbargoed.org.uk) exposing the scheme as flying in the face of the Assembly’s new Planning Policy Wales, has told Matt Wootton in an email “I think that this kind of decision has got to be taken locally and so as Director of Policy I feel that I should avoid making any comment or intervention”.

Mr Wootton said in reply “From the highest levels down to the councillors, there is a conspiracy of silence to not talk about the massive problems with the Bargoed scheme in the hope that they’ll just go away until after the Local Elections. Labour and Plaid are both stuck in a time-warp advocating a road scheme from the Dark Ages, while the Lib Dems have told us they won’t apply scrutiny because an opinion poll of theirs showed it wouldn’t be a vote-winner. The Greens are the only party that are standing up for Assembly planning policy, social justice and economic sense by exposing a £17m supermarket Access Road through Bargoed Country Park that will make a loss of £10 to £12 million."

Source:	Wales Green Party
	Web Link