Wisley fights back

Nearly three years ago, I noticed at reference 1 the fight that the RHS is putting up against the plans to upgrade the busy and accident prone junction of the M25 and the A3, plans which I believe will take a slice of land off the eastern side of their Wisley gardens, although I have not today been able to find any intelligible map to that effect.

This prompted by being invited by email by one Sue Biggs, director general of the RHS, more of an operator of visitor attractions these days than the learned society of which my father was once a member, to sign a petition, with this request coming with no information about the plans being protested.

Irritated once again by the RHS failure to take visible account of anyone else's point of view, I turned to Highways England's web site at reference 2, which offers a huge amount of information - but sadly, they are not much better of taking visible account of anyone else's point of view than the RHS. A pity, for example, given the huge amount of money that must be being spent on ramping this project up, that they have not made more helpful maps more readily available than the detailed engineers' drawings that I was able to find - with an example, No.20, included above.

Nor was I impressed by the statement that this stretch of the A3 would be upgraded to four lanes in both directions - except where it crosses the M25 where it will remain two lanes in both directions. A fact gleaned from somewhere near the beginning of the 93 pages of reference 3. Hopefully the traffic engineers know their business.

But as a public relations exercise, not impressed by the RHS or the highways people, and I shall not be signing the RHS petition. 

PS: perhaps our leader's special advisor has a point when he says that planning in this country is broken.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/wisley-attack.html.

Reference 2: https://highwaysengland.co.uk/projects/m25-junction-10-to-a3-wisley-interchange/.

Reference 3: Introduction to the Application and scheme description. Otherwise: M25 junction 10/A3 Wisley interchange - TR010030 - 1.2 Introduction to the Application and Scheme Description -Regulation 5(2)(q) Planning Act 2008 - Infrastructure Planning (Applications: Prescribed Forms and Procedure) Regulations 2009. 

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Biggs. 'Sue-Anne Hilbre Biggs CBE is the Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society. Biggs began her career in the travel industry, where she worked for 30 years, and was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award by the Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards. She was made a CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours, for her services to the environment [and to the] ornamental horticulture industries'. So now we know in which industry to locate the Wisley operation!