Essex County Council motion to support LTC
A motion is being presented at County Hall (Essex County Council) at Full Council 9th October for 10.00 AM to support Option C. This motion is being tabled by the Administration.
The full text of the motion is as follows:
Lower Thames Crossing
Moved by Councillor Mohindra and seconded by Councillor Bentley
‘This Council fully supports the Government’s announcement of its preferred Option C for the proposed new Lower Thames Crossing. This would be a bored tunnel under the River Thames east of Gravesend and Tilbury. The route would enable sustainable local development and regional growth leading to a stronger economy as well as proving a safe and reliable road that will improve the resilience of the wider road network. It will also greatly improve the wider economy of UK PLC as well as Greater Essex and generate thousands of new jobs. It is now imperative that work on this Option gets underway to ensure the future prosperity of the County and Country.’
We, as the Thames Crossing Action Group have emailed all of the Essex Councillors to ask them to consider opposing this motion. This is the email we sent them:
Dear Councillors
We are emailing on behalf of the Thames Crossing Action Group who strongly oppose the proposed Lower Thames Crossing.
We are aware that a motion to support the Lower Thames Crossing is being put forward at your Full Council Meeting on Tues 9th Oct.
The motion:
‘This Council fully supports the Government’s announcement of its preferred Option C for the proposed new Lower Thames Crossing. This would be a bored tunnel under the River Thames east of Gravesend and Tilbury. The route would enable sustainable local development and regional growth leading to a stronger economy as well as proving a safe and reliable road that will improve the resilience of the wider road network. It will also greatly improve the wider economy of UK PLC as well as Greater Essex and generate thousands of new jobs. It is now imperative that work on this Option gets underway to ensure the future prosperity of the County and Country.”
We would ask you to review the information below and urge you to oppose the motion.
There is nothing sustainable at all about the proposed LTC, it is destructive. It would destroy homes, communities, greenbelt land, agricultural land, ancient forests, and resident’s health and lives.
The route can in no way be considered safe when it creates a toxic triangle that increases pollution levels in areas that are already suffering with illegally high levels of pollution.
The road will not be reliable as it will bring extra traffic and congestion to already overloaded routes such as the A2, A13, and M25. It will not do anything to solve the issues at the Dartford Crossing, and until the current crossing is fixed all the issues we all suffer with, due to the Dartford Crossing will remain. Even Highways England’s LTC Project Director Tim Jones admits it will not solve the issues north and south of the river – https://www.thamescrossingactiongroup.com/it-wont-solve-dartford-crossing-issues/
Only 14% of traffic that uses the current crossing will use the new route, that is taken from Highways England’s own figures. Do you really expect people to detour miles out of their way to use the new route unless there is a problem at the current crossing? We all know that by the time the current crossing blocks the M25 it will then be too late for traffic to detour to the new route, and the congestion will just be more widespread as traffic tries to cut through Thurrock and Kent between the two crossings.
We are yet to see any hard evidence that LTC will bring economic benefits to the area, other than for the developers that benefit from the land grab that this project ultimately seems to be about.
Please watch this video for some simple facts – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ivyYIbpH0 , we would also invite you to visit our website www.tcag.info.
If you have any questions, we would be more than happy to discuss the matter with you, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Thank you for your time, we really hope you will consider opposing the motion rather than supporting this destructive and toxic route.
Kind regards
Laura Blake
Vice Chair
Thames Crossing Action Group
www.tcag.info
If you wish to contact the Essex County Councillors to express your opinion and ask them to consider voting against supporting LTC, here are their emails ready for you to copy and paste into your email. We thought we’d do this to help out as it takes forever to go through getting each individuals email address from the Essex CC website!
cllr.lee.scordis@essex.gov.uk; cllr.kerry.smith@essex.gov.uk; cllr.anthony.hedley@essex.gov.uk; cllr.richard.moore@essex.gov.uk; cllr.stephen.canning@essex.gov.uk; cllr.robert.mitchell@essex.gov.uk; cllr.wendy.schmitt@essex.gov.uk; cllr.louise.mckinlay@essex.gov.uk; cllr.barry.aspinell@essex.gov.uk; cllr.lesley.wagland@essex.gov.uk; cllr.david.kendall@essex.gov.uk; cllr.alan.goggin@essex.gov.uk; cllr.john.aldridge@essex.gov.uk; cllr.valerie.metcalfe@essex.gov.uk; cllr.dave.blackwell@essex.gov.uk; cllr.peter.may@essex.gov.uk; cllr.john.spence@essex.gov.uk; cllr.dick.madden@essex.gov.uk; cllr.stephen.robinson@essex.gov.uk; cllr.jude.deakin@essex.gov.uk; cllr.gagan.mohindra@essex.gov.uk; cllr.colin.sargeant@essex.gov.uk; cllr.andy.wood@essex.gov.uk; cllr.paul.honeywood@essex.gov.uk; cllr.anne.brown@essex.gov.uk; cllr.sue.lissimore@essex.gov.uk; cllr.susan.barker@essex.gov.uk; cllr.christopher.whitbread@essex.gov.uk; cllr.mark.platt@essex.gov.uk; cllr.jenny.chandler@essex.gov.uk; cllr.jillian.reeves@essex.gov.uk; cllr.jo.beavis@essex.gov.uk; cllr.mike.garnett@essex.gov.uk; cllr.eddie.johnson@essex.gov.uk; cllr.michael.hardware@essex.gov.uk; cllr.clive.souter@essex.gov.uk; cllr.ivan.henderson@essex.gov.uk; cllr.david.finch@essex.gov.uk; cllr.mark.durham@essex.gov.uk; cllr.allan.davies@essex.gov.uk; cllr.jeff.henry@essex.gov.uk; cllr.chris.pond@essex.gov.uk; cllr.penny.channer@essex.gov.uk; cllr.dave.harris@essex.gov.uk; cllr.john.jowers@essex.gov.uk; cllr.anne.turrell@essex.gov.uk; cllr.anthony.jackson@essex.gov.uk; cllr.maggie.mcewen@essex.gov.uk; cllr.john.baker@essex.gov.uk; cllr.stephen.hillier@essex.gov.uk; cllr.patricia.reid@essex.gov.uk; cllr.malcolm.maddocks@essex.gov.uk; cllr.june.lumley@essex.gov.uk; cllr.terry.cutmore@essex.gov.uk; cllr.mike.steptoe@essex.gov.uk; cllr.carole.weston@essex.gov.uk; cllr.john.moran@essex.gov.uk; cllr.andrew.sheldon@essex.gov.uk; cllr.bob.massey@essex.gov.uk; cllr.ron.pratt@essex.gov.uk; cllr.mike.mackrory@essex.gov.uk; cllr.ray.gooding@essex.gov.uk; cllr.kevin.bentley@essex.gov.uk; cllr.ian.grundy@essex.gov.uk; cllr.andy.erskine@essex.gov.uk; cllr.carlo.guglielmi@essex.gov.uk; cllr.simon.walsh@essex.gov.uk; cllr.graham.butland@essex.gov.uk; cllr.beverley.egan@essex.gov.uk; cllr.ricki.gadsby@essex.gov.uk; cllr.tony.ball@essex.gov.uk; cllr.malcolm.buckley@essex.gov.uk; cllr.james.abbott@essex.gov.uk; cllr.derrick.louis@essex.gov.uk; cllr.julie.young@essex.gov.uk;