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The Society's Chair is

Jeremy Milln

Contact details

Tel: 01432 357085; Mob: 07779 034457

E-mail: Jeremy.Milln@gmail.com

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The Society’s Chair, at the invitation of the Editor of the Hereford Times, contributes an occasional “Opinion Piece” for Herefordshire’s principle weekly newspaper of record.

 

Previous articles see Topics Tab E-K   Hereford Times Opinion Pieces​

 

TALKING POINT HEREFORD TIMES - 20th August 2026 

Civic Societies, set up to demand high standards in development, scrutinise planning applications. The biggest change we face is the proposed Hereford bypass, so we took interest in application 261956 where the Council is applying to itself for a screening opinion on whether or not to do an environmental impact assessment for a long list of supplementary and enabling works, arguing that it need not do so.  This includes haulage roads, attenuation ponds, compounds, stockpiles, drainage ditches and access-ways across a swathe of landscape through Grafton and Haywood. With disturbance, compaction and contamination it would involve the loss of, or damage to, over ten acres of best farmland and much hedgerow.

 

With the news of wildfires and record temperatures, the building of motor roads, given their enormous appetite for fossil fuels in construction, never mind their use, seems oddly out-of-touch. We now also understand the damage they do to our health, how repeatedly they fail as efficient transport solutions for cities and how ruinous they are for local taxpayers.

 

An EIA, intended to assess the effects on air, water, soils, heritage, landscape, wildlife, woodland and so on, is a statutory requirement for schemes of this size and sensitivity. Integral to the proposed SLR this one affects a wide area containing listed buildings, archaeological sites, ancient woodland and red-listed species such as great crested newt and hazel dormouse. Yet, rather than demonstrating leadership and responsibility the Council's application downplays this. The scale and extent are claimed to be 'limited and temporary' and the cumulative effect of the wider bypass as 'constrained'.

 

What is required is an Environmental Statement to cover the proposed work in the context of an updated EIA for the linked SLR scheme as a whole. What it should not do is salami slice integral elements or offer vague promises to undertake them later in an effort to circumvent the rules.  As Jeeves would have said: rem acu tetigisti.