LOCAL MP, Andrew Murrison, has written to the Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Harper, to object to the improper extension of Bath’s clean air zone (CAZ).
The local MP says that Bath & North East Somerset Council (BANES) decision, made in December, to charge the owners of Euro VI diesel-powered vehicles, whose weight exceeds 12 tonnes, for passing through the Bath CAZ will drive more traffic onto the A350 and Westbury. In the letter he also states that the decision is unnecessary, and it has been carried out improperly.
Andrew Murrison said, “BANES, in the run up to local elections, is manipulating environmental legislation to shift heavy traffic from its doorsteps onto its neighbours’. If it is successful, yet more traffic will rumble through Westbury, up the A350 and through Wiltshire villages. I share Wiltshire Council’s dissatisfaction with BANES’s conduct and cynical disregard of its neighbours which, I’m sorry to say under its current leadership, is fairly typical.”
The MP’s team added, “BANES has recently established temporary weight restrictions for vehicles travelling over the bridge and have even stated that the ban Euro VI vehicles is designed to protect Bath’s road infrastructure. This decision is therefore an improper use of environmental policy.
Moreover, BANES has not conducted the engagement with neighbouring authorities upon which the decision was supposed to be conditioned, at least as far as Wiltshire Council is concerned.”
