A27 Polegate Bypass (Hansard, 19 January 1998)

§ Ms Glenda Jackson

I have asked the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency, Mr. Lawrie Haynes, to write to the hon. Member.

Letter from Lawrie Haynes to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 19 January 1998: The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question on how much has been spent to date in total on the proposals to build the A27 Polegate Bypass broken down into (a) land acquisition, (b) public consultation, (c) design costs, (d) compensation payments to tenderers and (e) others. The overall spend so far is approximately £3.7m (including VAT). Of that, £1.4m has been spent on land acquisition, including land blighted by the scheme, but not necessarily required for it. Some of the costs would be recovered when any surplus land is sold. Design costs, which include the development of preliminary design through public consultation to detailed design, are around £1m; it is not possible to break this down further except at disproportionate cost. No compensation payments to tenderers (i.e for the DBFO project) have been made to date. We have also spent £1m on advance payments to statutory undertakers (eg to move overhead electric power lines), some of which may be recoverable if the scheme does not go ahead, and £250,000 on ground investigation surveys. The only other item of major expenditure has been the preparation of tender documents for the Weald and Downland DBFO project of which this scheme was part, we estimate that the portion of costs attributable to this scheme are in the order of £50,000.