CAMPAIGNERS are battling a development which they claim would end all hopes of a Western Relief bypass.

Weymouth Civic Society fear proposals for a £10million development at the Ferrybridge Inn site will sound the death knell for the bypass and lead to overdevelopment in the area.

The society’s fears have grown with the submitting of a planning application by Ferrybridge Development LLP.

Mike Martin, chairman of Weymouth Civic Society planning sub-committee, said the current traffic corridor along Boot Hill, Buxton Road and Portland Road linking Weymouth to Portland was completely inadequate.

He said: “Anybody who lives along there will tell you it is pretty awful and it’s getting worse.

“It’s still on some local plans that the land should be reserved for this route in the future. To snuff it out with the development at Ferrybridge, in our opinion, would be wrong.”

Former engineer and Portland resident Stuart Morris said the plan was a major and unjustifiable departure from the adopted Local Plan.

He said: “The Wyke Regis Relief Road may be in limbo at present, having been subject to conflicting policies, but nothing should be permitted which would prevent it ever being built. This development would preclude it not just for any given plan period, but forever.

“Once you build the development there’s no way to find the money to demolish it so it rules it out forever.”

Ferrybridge Development LLP plan to demolish the Victorian era Ferrybridge Inn to allow 11 townhouses, five larger family maisonettes, six duplexes and eight apartments to be built.

Plans also include 72 car parking spaces and a restaurant.

Stewart Drummond, of Coombe Property Consultants, said he believed the Western Relief Road had been put on the back burner by county and district councils.

The applicant’s development consultant said: “It was proposed for a road going along the Fleet into the West Dorset area but the problem is there’s no money for it.”

Paul Willis, Dorset County Council’s Transport Planning and Development Liaison Group Manager, said: “The Western Relief Route to Portland does not exist as a current DCC proposal.”

He added: “If, post 2026, the solution to traffic problems was a road, then, where there was development which prejudiced its construction, it would have to be dealt with.”

fears relief road would damage fleet area

The Western Relief Road linking Chickerell to Ferrybridge would come under Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and West Dorset District Council authorities.

The proposed road would go from Chickerell Army Camp, through the World Heritage Coast between the Fleet and Charlestown, to the Chesil Beach roundabout in Ferrybridge. Those in favour of the three-mile road claim it would be as important as the Weymouth Relief Road in relieving congestion along the Buxton Road, Wyke Road and Rodwell Road.

The idea for the road bypassing Wyke Regis was mooted in the authorities Local Plans in 1998. In 2005 a public inquiry into the plans was held. The route was opposed by groups who claimed the bypass would damage the environmentally important Fleet area.

Two weeks before the inquiry more than 120 protesters turned out for a march to highlight fears that the road would threaten the environment.