Register an interest to share your opinions on A14 upgrade

Anyone who wants to have a say on the planned £1.5billion upgrade of the A14 needs to register to comment.

The Highways Agency’s plans - including a southern Huntingdon bypass and the demolition of the viaduct at Huntingdon - are to be examined by the Government’s Planning Inspectorate.

From today (Wednesday, February 4), people have until midnight on March 12 to register as an ‘interested party’ on the planning inspectorate’s website at infrastructure.planningportal.gov.uk.

The HA has applied for a development consent order which, if granted, could lead to work starting next year, with traffic using the new bypass by 2020.

Its plans, which were modified after more than 1,400 responses were received during a public consultation on the scheme, were accepted for examination this week.

Mike Evans, a member of the HA’s A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon project team, said: “Obviously we are delighted that our application has been accepted. We received a high number of responses during the consultation last year. We listened to the feedback, and where we could, we have made several changes to the design for the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme.

“I strongly urge anyone with an interest in the A14 plans - whether living locally or outside of Cambridgeshire, whether in favour of the proposals or not - to register as an ‘interested party’ with the Planning Inspectorate.”

Many of the changes made as a result of the consultation were to junction and side road layouts, private accesses and environmental mitigation.

More significant was a longer viaduct over the River Great Ouse floodplain and a re-routed section of the A1 and A14 near Brampton to provide “environmental benefits”.

INFORMATION: For more details on registering, call the Planning Inspectorate helpline on 0303 4445000. To view the plans, click here.

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