This page was updated in January 2021
This page provides information on why the public has not been consulted by Highways England; on who are the project ‘Stakeholders’; and on the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).
A huge democratic deficit?
Many documents about the Ox-Cam expressway appeared towards the end of 2017, but they suggested that plans were being hatched long before these documents appeared. For example, there was a 2016 call for developers, land-owners and others to come forward and offer land for developing the Oxford-Cambridge Arc area. Why were we, the public, not involved then, and why haven’t we been involved at all since, right up to the present time?
There have been numerous Westminster and other conferences about the Ox-Cam expressway, involving major house-builders, architects, land and estate agents and potential investors in the Arc. Very recently a group of 25 developers with assets totalling over £50 billion have created a Radical Regeneration Manifesto – a proposal to ‘remove politicians from the planning process’ country-wide, starting with the Oxford to Cambridge Arc area, and to strip areas of development from normal planning restrictions (for example, by demanding Olympic 2012 powers of compulsory purchase, and by extending Permitted Development Rights, PDRs). A controversial new Planning White Paper in August 2020 appears to meet many of the Radical Regeneration manifesto’s demands and, despite promises to the contrary, removes much public scrutiny from, or control over, the later stages of the planning process. Un-elected developers responsible only to themselves and shareholders are planning the future of our entire area.
And we haven’t yet been asked our opinion about anything.
Why hasn’t the public been more involved?
A key to the answer to this question is tucked away in Highways England’s minutes of a stakeholder meeting held in March 2018. These minutes were released as a result of a Freedom of Information request issued to Highways England by Steve Dawe of the No Expressway Alliance. Unsurprisingly, you won’t find these minutes on any Highways England website.
This is what the minutes say:
"Under a typical highways scheme stakeholders would not be engaged at this early stage. Noted that one consequence of the early engagement currently being undertaken is that the Project Team is not able to answer all stakeholders’ questions.
Engagement will continue until DCO application. Engagement with members of the public on corridors is challenged by the scale of the Project area. There are c.3.3 million people living in the arc. Consultation on corridors would require years of additional work at substantial cost to taxpayers. It would also leave a level of uncertainty across the region that was undesirable.
The Project Team are therefore engaging with Stakeholder Reference groups who themselves represent various public interests (environment, road users etc).
Public consultation is due to start in Stage 2 (2019) on route options. There are likely to be around 3 route options."
Highways England has not consulted the general public because there are far too many of us across the Arc; it would take far too long; and it would be far too expensive (a bill we as taxpayers would be happy to pay since it would be a fraction of the cost of this multi-billion project which, also, we will eventually have to pay for, if it goes ahead).
Instead of consulting with the general public, Highways England has engaged with stakeholders who, it claims, represent the public’s interest.
Who are the stakeholders and what have they been doing?
…And do they really represent our interests?
Again, through a Freedom of Information request we have obtained lists of stakeholders as at December 2017, March 2018 and July 2019 (click on any date to see a full list of stakeholders at that time). The early list is more relevant because this is when important decisions were being taken over the preferred corridor.
In December 2017 there were 203 registered stakeholders. These covered almost the entire alphabet from the AA to the Woodland Trust, taking in many businesses (Astra Zeneca, Diageo, GSK etc.), supermarket companies (Aldi, Asda, Cooperative, Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose), transport (bus, train and aviation), hospitality (Holiday Inn, Premier Inn, Travel Lodge) and utility (water, gas electricity) companies in between, and including potential investors (British/American Tobacco, HSBC).
Only 20 of the 203 stakeholders are democratically elected; the District and County Councils along the corridor.
Fewer than 10% of stakeholders democratically elected?
How dare Highways England imagine that the vast majority of these stakeholders can represent the public’s interest in any shape or form? They cannot speak for us, because we do not elect them.
And the democratic stakeholders. Asleep at the wheel?
Despite the huge democratic deficit among most of the stakeholders, the remaining democratically elected ones should have been informing the general public about expressway plans at each and every stage. They should have held public meetings to explain expressway plans and developments; they should have gathered feed-back from the public and presented it to Highways England.
None of this happened.
Ever.
There has not been a single expressway meeting held by any District or County Council anywhere across the entire Arc from Oxford to Cambridge.
Oxfordshire Councillors told NEG that when they went to stakeholder meetings they were given slick Powerpoint presentations by Highways England and others, and asked a few questions; and that was it. They claimed to be as much in the dark about expressway plans as are we, the general public.
This is totally unsatisfactory. With few, very noble exceptions we have been failed by our elected Councillors in properly representing our interests in the largest development plans in this region of the country for more than a century. On our behalf they should have demanded more information and then presented it to us for consideration.
But many of them couldn’t……
Not just asleep at the wheel, but also muzzled by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)
At a meeting in Brill, Bucks in June 2019, Cllr Martin Tett, Leader of Bucks County Council and also Chair of England’s Economic Heartland, EEH, let slip that he had ‘refused to sign an NDA’ because he did not want to be prevented from telling his constituents about expressway plans.
NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement, commonly called a ‘gagging order’. A select few stakeholders had been asked by Highways England to sign NDAs before they could be shown certain details of expressway routes. An NDA prevented them from telling anyone else about these plans.
Cllr Martin Tett’s slip at the Brill meeting was followed up by BBC South which soon discovered that Oxfordshire County Council had signed the NDA.
NEG’s direct approach to Highways England, asking for more information about NDAs, was met initially by stonewalling and prevarication. Highways England seemed reluctant to admit the existence of NDAs that had already been confirmed to a wide audience on regional TV, and in a meeting NEG had with the Highways England Project Director for the Ox-Cam Expressway.
NEG challenged this original refusal of our Freedom of Information request. Given that it was rapidly becoming common knowledge, Highways England eventually relented and admitted the existence of NDAs, the purpose of which, it said, was to show key stakeholders detailed plans of routes with a view to seeing whether those routes threatened the stakeholders’ interests or resources in any way. Because at the time there were many tens of routes, the purpose of the NDA was to prevent all of these routes becoming known, and causing widespread concern among the general public. Only one route will eventually be selected, so much of this concern would, in the end, be unnecessary.
NEG followed up this admission of the existence of NDAs with more Freedom of Information requests, one for the wording of the NDA and another for a list of those who had been asked, and had agreed to sign an NDA and those who had refused.
You can read an example of the full NDA here. Notice that one of the clauses of the NDA is that those who sign must deny the existence of the NDA (so, a double-gagging order!). This is the reason Highways England gave for initially refusing our Freedom of Information request.
Only relatively few stakeholders have been asked, and agreed, to sign NDAs:
England’s Economic Heartland:29 April 2019
HS2: 17 September 2015
Milton Keynes Council: 3 April 2019
Oxfordshire County Council: 7 March 2019
South Oxfordshire District Council: 4 March 2019
Vale of White Horse District Council: 4 March 2019
Only two stakeholders, Aylesbury Vale District Council and Buckinghamshire County Council, had been asked, but refused to sign NDAs.
For some unknown reason, Cherwell District Council in Oxfordshire, which will be affected by any route in Corridor B, was never asked to sign an NDA. Nor were significant wildlife trusts such as the RSPB and BBOWT asked to sign NDAs despite the fact that any expressway route is almost certain to affect wildlife along the corridor.
NEG finds it extraordinary that Highways England sought to gag at least some of the only democratically elected stakeholders, thus preventing them from performing the role that Highways England itself had assigned to them; ‘representing various public interests’.
Following the official pausing of expressway plans in March 2020, Highways England has taken a back seat in further Ox-Cam Arc proposals, but we are concerned that NDAs may be keeping much relevant information from public view in the other major area of these proposals - housing. The Government seems increasingly keen to use NDAs in major infrastructure projects (for example, hundreds of NDAs are involved in HS2 planning). When NDAs are used, and whatever their intentions, the question will always arise ‘What are they trying to hide?’