There’s a lot of deliberate misinformation already flying around the internet about why Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat councillors chose to abstain on a Conservative motion to downgrade the A1123 from Soham to Wyton to a B road.

In short:

1. We don’t oppose the proposal, we just want to see evidence and analysis to enable an informed view.
2. The Council will lose over £250,000 a year in maintenance funds for this road (professional estimate) if it is downgraded, with no corresponding reduction in maintenance need (professional opinion), and that huge financial cost to the Council needs to be properly justified.
3. There is a sensible council process for regrading roads, which Conservative councillors have completely ignored, and which includes the need to analyse the implications for other roads in the network.

To put the record straight, here’s what I said in today’s debate.

“I’m wearing my Alice in Wonderland earrings today, as I usually do when I’m attending a council meeting at which something even more absurd than usual is about to be decided. They’re particularly apt today, because it’s in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that the Queen of Hearts makes her famously preposterous demand. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

And that’s where this motion is today, really. It puts forward an answer to a problem that it hasn’t properly considered. It completely ignores the council’s policy on such matters, and its requirement for evidence, facts, and reasoned argument. And jumps feet-first into an unproven conclusion, with no consideration of its effects on other roads and other communities.

Cllr Hunt has referred to the officers’ briefing on this motion. Well, downgrading the A1123 will, on officers’ calculations, cost the council some quarter of a million pounds a year in lost maintenance funding. But it is highly unlikely to reduce either the cost of maintaining the road or the amount of traffic on it.

To take just two examples, the B1381 through Sutton, and the B1050 through Willingham, both of which intersect the A1123, also experience unacceptable volumes of HCV traffic, despite their classification as B roads.

The amendment that has just been rejected would at least have taken a wider view of the issue. Because it is an issue. A significant issue. Not just for Cllr Hunt and the residents he represents. But also for the residents of Sutton, Willingham, Godmanchester, Cottenham, and many other towns and villages who have been campaigning for years against this blight on their communities—a blight this council has ignored for far too long, and is likely to continue to ignore so long as it remains under the present administration.

We will wait to see the evidence to justify what is being proposed: the strategic role of the road, the general level of traffic and proportion of goods vehicles it carries, wider traffic management and routing strategies in the vicinity, and the standard and classification of other nearby roads. We will wait to see the technical evaluation, and to hear whether this proposal complies with Government guidance. We will await a full financial analysis, and a study of the impact on other parts of the road network. And at that point we will be able to take a considered view on whether this quarter-million pound proposal can be justified (as it must be) to Government ministers.”

The decision to downgrade the A1123 will be one for the Council to take, but legally the Department of Transport has the power to intervene, and anyone affected can bring a challenge to the regrading. The Council would then have to defend its decision-making process to Ministers, and based on the lack of evidence presented to the Council we’re not sure it currently could.