Anti road campaigners in Milton Keynes are put on a war footing as Oxford-Cambridge expressway crunch approaches

Although behind the scenes members of the Woburn Sands No Expressway Group have heard that the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge road will be officially ditched by the government next month, they are taking no chances.

“We need to keep pushing and make lots of noise,” said campaigner Alex Poppleton at a meeting in Woburn Sands on Tuesday (Feb 18). “Let’s hope they do decide not to go ahead but we shouldn’t take our foot off the gas in the meantime.”

In the next few weeks campaigners will be delivering a petition to Westminster, and holding more meetings in a bid to raise awareness of what they see as the threat posed by a possible new road.

They say they have looked at possible routes between two named junctions, one at Brogborough, and the other “south of Bletchley” and concluded that the route would inevitably sever villages including Wavendon.

If it closely follows the route of the Bletchley to Bedford part of the East West Railway line, the new road would also come close to Caldecotte and other communities on the fringe of Milton Keynes, the meeting at St Mary’s Church Hall heard.

Campaigners also fear that the new road will bring with it one million new homes and very heavy lorries.

Cllr David Hopkins (Cons, Danesborough & Walton) told the meeting that campaigners have been told by a local MP that ministers were minded NOT to proceed with the expressway from junction 13 to Oxford – but that this decision has not been taken, and no announcement made.

A press officer for the Department for Transport said: “We will provide an update on whether or not the project should continue in due course.”

Cllr Hopkins said: “We’ve got to keep the pressure up until the end.”

Campaigners are worried that once a route is announced it is not a matter of being able to stop the road because it is a nationally significant government project with a lack of democratic input.

If the road does not go ahead, the campaigners want the money that would have been spent on the road to instead go to sorting out potential problems with the route of the East West Rail.

Concerns about the possibility for disruption and community severance from more trains using the East West Rail line between Bedford and Milton Keynes were also raised at the meeting.

Some residents were worried about how long the level crossings at Woburn Sands and Bow Brickhill would have to be closed when more trains use the line.

But the meeting was told that the campaign strategy is to support the railway and campaign for ways to lessen the impact.

Cllr Hopkins said that there is land for a bridge to take traffic over the rail line Bow Brickhill. But the meeting also heard that there is a lack of space for a similar scheme at Woburn Sands.