Gateway junction works still stalled
East Sussex County Council (ESCC) remains at apparent loggerheads with its contractors Sea Change Sussex over completion of the Queensway Gateway junction road which is intended to connect traffic from the Bexhill link road to the A21.
On 16 June Richard Dawson of ESCC reported to a meeting of the Accountability Board of SELEP (the South East Local Enterprise Partnership, which has funded the project) that the council is still waiting for Sea Change to submit to them and to National Highways full plans and drawings, including the signage package for the junction connection.
He went on to describe both ESCC and Sea Change as “working to confirm the overall funding package and contractual position” before the final connection “can commence onsite”. He referred to “on-going dialogue” with the company seeking a “resolution” of their disagreements.
Sea Change has, however, given a different version of events. “Claims that ESCC and National Highways are awaiting plans from Sea Change are wrong”, a company spokesperson said last week. “Our engineers submitted a comprehensive package of plans to the council on 9 March. We are yet to receive a full set of comments on them, with particular delays occurring in the council’s street lighting responses.
“While there might be a need for minor design variations, we can’t undertake these until we’ve received the full comments. In fact we’ve been waiting for a full response on the plans for longer than the county council’s current guidance says is required to complete a full Section 278 agreement [the legal agreement between a highway authority and a developer to make permanent highway alterations].”
Suspicion remains that ESCC is in no hurry to complete the design package because there remains fundamental disagreement between the parties as to who should pay the costs of implementation. At previous meetings the SELEP Accountability Board has warned representatives of ESCC that failure to complete the project within a reasonable time was likely to trigger a call to recoup up to £15 million already provided. However the meeting on 16 June merely noted that “it has not been possible to provide a full update on the project at this meeting” and that “options for the way forward” will be brought to the next meeting scheduled for 22 September.
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It is a mystery why these works are not entirely undertaken by ESCC as the Highway Authority. Is this another example of their disinterest in what happens at our end of the county? This project has been clouded by incompetence, buffoonery and lack of transparency for years. Is it too much to expect our MP to bang heads together to make things happen?