Margaret Willmot, Salisbury Campaign for Better Transport
“It just is a matter of persistence.”
Salisbury Campaign for Better Transport
Salisbury Campaign for Better Transport, which formed in 1998, stopped what would have been a very damaging road around the town – a 5.5-kilometre road across the River Nadder and its floodplain, cutting through the downland landscape setting of Salisbury and intruding into the tranquil rural valley of the River Ebble. The small group of volunteers stopped the road by presenting well-researched arguments against it and good alternatives to it, gathering support for their position and simply not giving up.
“You can never actually put success down to one thing, which is kind of nice, because everyone has contributed to it” says Margaret Willmot, who has been campaigning with the group for the past 9 years.
Though that’s true, there are a few key lessons you take away from Margaret’s experience.
Conduct your own traffic survey
The county council suggested the road would help big lorries access an industrial estate. In order to help understand traffic levels in her area, and better argue the case that a new road wasn’t needed, Margaret and 12 friends conducted a traffic survey, counting traffic over a 12-hour period. The survey showed that, because of the vehicle categories they had used, the County Council had over-estimated the number of big lorries going through the city centre to access the industrial estate by nearly threefold.
Good letter leads to wide support
Before building the proposed road, the Brunel Link/Harnham Relief Road, Wiltshire County Council had to get planning permission for it. On behalf of her group, Margaret wrote to object to the planning application. The detailed, well-referenced letter set out many clear flaws with the road proposal, including lack of compliance with the area’s development plan, a failure to establish a need for the road and environmental and safety concerns. “I enjoy that sort of thing, that ‘forensic analysis’,” she says.
After submitting the letter to the county council, Margaret circulated it widely, to national, regional, district and parish contacts. The result of that circulation?
- Her letter fed into the district council’s scrutiny of, and eventual opposition to, the road proposal
- Parish councillors used the letter to convince nearby Hampshire County Council, New Forest National Park and Hampshire MPS to raise objections to the road, which would have resulted in more traffic coming their way.
The growing political voice against the road was powerful, even though those bodies didn’t officially determine whether the road got approved because, as Margaret figured, “the county does need some allies if it’s going to push ahead.” With added opposition from the Environment Agency, Natural England and some traders in the industrial park that the road was meant to help, it was very hard for the county to proceed.
It withdrew its planning application in 2006.
Keep close tabs on what the road promoters are saying
It was hard to understand all the discussions the county council was having with the region about whether the road would make it into the list of roads the region would put forward for Government funding, called the Regional Funding Allocation list. But it was well worth keeping tabs on what was going on, say Margaret! “I was tipped off to the fact that the county council was underplaying the objections to the scheme which it had received from the Environment Agency and Natural England – and had also omitted to mention that Salisbury District Council’s Scrutiny panel had recommended that the District Council withdraw its support for the scheme. I tabled statements at regional meetings and emailed various key players in the process to put the record straight!”
The decision at a regional level that the scheme would not be put into the regional funding allocation list was the last straw which finally led to the withdrawal of the planning application.
Offer good alternatives
The proposed road was supposed to give better lorry access to a run down industrial estate in Salisbury. After the road proposal was dropped, people began to rethink possibilities for the area. The district council has now published a draft vision for Salisbury which includes revitalising that neglected area and turning it into a real feature of the town.
The Salisbury group influenced that vision through its ‘green transport plan' published in December 2004. This report was distributed widely to district and county councillors and officers and it covered a wide range of green transport alternatives in Salisbury district not just alternatives to the road scheme.
Throw nothing away
Though she’s surrounded by boxes and files “cluttering up her flat” – five volumes of letters on her desk, seven volumes of environmental impact statements, files going back a decade – Margaret Willlmot doesn’t mind.
“You never know when something will be relevant again,” she says.
For example, when campaigning against the road, Margaret found a record in her files that revealed that county council had actually opposed a road proposal following part of the very same route a few years before, on environmental and archaeological grounds. She made sure to remind the council of its previous stance.
"Our campaign would not have been half as successful without the help of Campaign for Better Transport"
- Julie White, Sheffield resident campaigning against M1 widening
Margaret's video
Campaigner Margaret shares the secrets of her group's success in a short video.
Campaign for Better Transport Charitable Trust is a charity (1101929) and a company limited by guarantee (4943428)