I have written in Business MK before about the closure of the A509 London Road between J14 M1 and Tickford Roundabout on the A422 leading to Newport Pagnell, Olney and Bedford. The road has been closed since September 2023 except for access to the Holiday Inn hotel from J14.
In August 2023, Milton Keynes City Council announced that the A509 would reopen on September 27 2024. It is now March, some six months later, and it is still closed. It is no surprise that these new delays will cause more chaos for the beleaguered residents of Newport Pagnell.
Developers of the 461-hectares MK East site have failed to meet the reopening deadline but the council seems happy to issue wishy-washy apologies on their behalf. Cllr Lauren Townsend, cabinet member for public realm: “We appreciate that any long-term road closure causes inconvenience. The new development here will bring some 5,000 new properties to the area as well as employment land for businesses.”
She forgot to mention that there would be nowhere to park and nowhere to charge your electric car.
MKCC explains the reasons for the development’s more than 500 days’ delays as “bad weather and the sheer extent of the MK East project’s work”. It is worth noting that the development will include a new 63-hectare river valley park providing additional green space for residents. But many would claim that the developers cannot build on this additional land because of major flood risks, which might still be a problem elsewhere on the site.
Why does rain appear to continually stop play on this site? Is it genuinely fit to build on? Will these 5,000 new homes be at risk of flooding? I think we need to be properly informed.
Meanwhile, traffic is advised to use the official diversion via the V8 Marlborough Street on to H3 Monks Way. But it does not. Anyone with any sense uses the somewhat shorter V11 Tongwell Street and Willen Road crossing the M1, which is itself subjected to occasional but largely short-lived road closures as warehouses go up.
For those asking how MK East is coming on, new drone photos (viewable online) show the oh so slow development, including a new roundabout and a new road being built through the new estate. MK East appears to be the UK’s biggest muddy field and MKCC has let us down again, because the new access road servicing these 5,000 new homes is, it seems, a single carriageway. You would think MKCC would have learned its lesson from the planning disaster that is the laughably inadequate Countess Way extension of the H7 Chaffron Way.
The A509 might easily, for an increase in cost to the developers, have been kept open while MK East is built. If, as was claimed, it required a redesign of the road network, why was this not done before any building of the 5,000 new homes, a community hub, a primary school and local shops and employments zones?
While MP for Milton Keynes North, Ben Everitt questioned why the new access road was not built in advance of the A509 closure and said in the House of Commons when the MK East plan was announced: “Reckless over-expansion in rural areas is a real and pressing danger.
“My constituents who live in rural communities and market towns such as Olney and Newport Pagnell do not want and do not deserve to be swamped by poorly planned, sprawling housing developments.
“We need to make planning work better for people and their communities. We need to get back to those pure principles just as the visionaries who built Milton Keynes did.”
The Liberal Democrats on the council are protesting too, despite having voted in favour of the development which led to the road closures. Their leader Cllr Jane Carr said: “People are tired of this and they deserve better than continued delays and uncertainty. That is why, as the main opposition, Lib Dem councillors will continue to hold the Labour-led City Council to account ensuring the concerns of local people and businesses are heard.”
Talk, it seems, is cheap.
Even the Prime Minister discovered how easy it is to be blindsided by events when he came to the Holiday Inn on the A509 last month with television crews and journalists to lay a symbolic brick and boast about his plan to build thousands of homes in up to 100 new towns.
Sir Keir was met with a barricade of more than 40 tractors and very noisy horn-blowing farmers, protesting about Labour’s 20% inheritance tax proposals and allowing imports of allegedly sub-standard produce undercutting the UK’s own high-welfare produce.
Not only was the PM unable to deliver his planned media presentation and make his speech but also he could not leave the site in his fleet of blue-lit Range Rovers. Instead, an emergency helicopter was called to airlift him back to London where he reappeared in Downing Street still wearing his high-viz builder’s coat.
The developers of MK East are Berkeley St. James, Bloor Homes and MKCC itself, which still owns part of the land and which has built the school and the health centre. Both of these will not be open for years as there are no houses for patients or pupils to live in nor a finished road going to it so patients elsewhere – some of whom are crying out for registration at a doctors’ surgery – cannot access them.
I contacted the contractor Laing O’Rourke, which has blamed proximity to the River Ouzel and above long-term average rainfall for delays.
They list 65 projects on their web site including the new Everton FC stadium, Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, HS2, East West Rail and other projects from Sydney to Dubai… but no mention of MK East.
I spoke with the charming and helpful Kate Sharkey, who is on site somewhere in that huge muddy field. She seemed puzzled why the website does not list MK East but she assured me that the A509 will reopen sometime in August this year.
Will it, given that previous deadlines have been missed? Your guess is as good as mine.
Cheerio.