The Brill Labour Party Branch was delighted to welcome 2 guest speakers to a public meeting in Long Crendon Library on Thursday the 25th July 2019.

Despite it being the hottest ever day in the UK, we had a good turnout, with a member who’d not attended any Labour events before, as well as a few members of the public.

We were delighted to welcome our 2 guest speakers, who were:

Dr Deborah Lovatt from the Buckinghamshire Expressway Action Group (BEAG)

Terry Pollard from the No Expressway Alliance

Both gave very interesting talks on the background to the Expressway, their respective organisations & the reasoning for their stance against the Expressway.

To summarise some of the many points, there has been no public consultation, nor any significant environmental assessment, the road will cut across the greenbelt & allied to HS2 will cause a significant loss in biodiversity in the north of Buckinghamshire. The road is intended to bypass the M25 for some East-West traffic, by linking the M11/A1/M1/M40, it will take significant freight from both Felixstowe & Southampton docks. All this allied to the huge effort needed to build the road will bring significant levels of pollution to the local area. The intention is for around 1000000 homes to be built along the road, though there is currently no publicly available plans on either the route or the location of significant developments. There has been no commitment to low cost housing designed for rent & sale, just the same old “affordable” housing that is beyond the reach of many in the south of the UK. Some councils have signed up to non disclosure agreements so information on at least some of the above is known, but is being kept from the public.

After the public meeting there was a vote of Brill party members to pass a motion to the CLP, with the aim of it being sent to the 2019 Labour Party conference.

The CLP had already approved a condensed version of the Labour for a Green New Deal (LGND) conference motion, it is expected that the new motion will replace this & the general LGND motion will be presented to the CLP for approval.