Shorne Parish Council

CONSULTATION MANIPULATION The consultation was extended to 1.2 million people and organisations, including 950,000 Dart Charge customers. A total of 47,034 responses were received: Respondent Designation Totals Members of the public 33,224 “Campaigns”[1] 13,284 Petitions[2] 3 Organisations and groups 523 Total 47,034 Campaigns Highways England define a campaign response as “an identically worded response that has been received from a group of people”.  They have determined that a total of 13,284 of the responses they responses received constituted ‘organised campaigns’. (Note that this included 946 responses from individuals who included some or all of the examples suggested for consideration by Shorne Parish Council, either with or without their own comments.) Of the 13,284 responses, a total of 13,240 came from individuals opposed to Option C. Only 44 came from organisations in favour of Option C.  39 of these were from small companies, and 5 came from a motorcycle action group. Highways England states that these 13,284 responses are included in the overall number of responses received (47,034), but are NOT INCLUDED in the responses received from members of the public or organisations.  In fact they were totally ignored in their post-consultation analysis. Petitions Highways England identifies 3 petitions received, all of which opposed Option C, which they say had a total of 188 signatures.  This included the Kent County Council petition, for which they have recorded 11 signatures.  This petition actually received 3,678 signatures.  In any event, Highways England states that all these petitions only counted as 3 responses in the overall number of responses received (47,034), and are NOT INCLUDED in the responses received from members of the public or organisations. In section 5.7.1 of volume 3 of their post-consultation analysis report, Highways England states that a total of 32,872 members of the public answered their key question 5a … Read more

Lower Thames Crossing Background In January 2009, the Department for Transport proposed 3 major options to increase capacity east of London over the Thames to be built downstream of the existing Dartford Crossing.  On 21 May 2013, the Secretary of State announced a consultation document inviting views on the relative merits of the 3 options for locating a new road based river crossing in the Lower Thames area and a variant of one of these 3 options. The original 3 options were: Option A: at the site of the existing A282 Dartford-Thurrock river crossing; Option B: connecting the A2 at Swanscombe with the A1089 at Thurrock; Option C: connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30; *There was also a variant for option C, which would additionally widen the A229 between the M2 and M20. As part of the 2013 consultation, Kent County Council (KCC) supported Option C variant, connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30, and additionally widening the A229 between the M2 and the M20.  KCC’s support for Option C variant was on the condition that the connection to the M2 was moved westwards, thus connecting into the A2. This western alignment would connect in to the A2 between the East of Gravesend and Cobham junctions.  KCC acknowledged that there will be some impact for local access options where insufficient merge/weave lengths on the A2 may require the closure of the Shorne/Cobham slip road. A total of 5,776 responses were received to the consultation.  Of these, 3,224 or 59% either did not enter an explicit response or expressed a preference for a new crossing at a location other than those consulted on.  Of those who expressed a preference for one of the options consulted on, … Read more