Wessex Fields A338 link road costing more than land was sold for

Figures for the BCP Council scheme through part of the Wessex Fields site have not been disclosed publicly.

However, Poole People councillor Andy Hadley told BCP Council's cabinet earlier this month that the costs had doubled and now “significantly exceed” how much University Hospitals Dorset paid for the area of the site, which was acquired from the local authority.

He said: “It has been to a public sector partner but how can this be good value for the taxpayer for us to be effectively paying them to take over the land.”

The council is required to build the road to provide controlled access to the hospital for staff and service vehicles as a condition of when the hospital trust acquired the area of the land, which sits between the dual carriageway and the hospital.

Members were discussing the subject as the project required increased funding, with the financial details detailed in a confidential paper only seen by councillors and officers.

• Read more: A338 Wessex Fields link road for hospital hit by rising costs

Littledown and Iford councillor Bobbie Dove, Conservative, said the road would “unlock benefits to the entire conurbation”, while fellow ward councillor Lawrence Williams said relief for Castle Lane was “on the horizon”, referencing ambulances struggling to get to the hospital from accidents on the Wessex Way and cars jammed for “almost hours on end”.

“This will give us the opportunity to stop all of that,” Cllr Williams said.

Cllr Hadley, who has consistently voiced concerns over the Wessex Fields project, said: “This isn’t going to unlock the problems in Castle Lane East, it’s actually going to make them worse because more people will feel entitled to drive to sites and get stuck in the traffic.”

Cllr Andy Hadley (Image: BCP Council)

Alliance for Local Living Oakdale ward councillor Felicity Rice said no one seemed to take forward what people, including health chiefs, wanted in the form of more buses, walking and cycling infrastructure to ease congestion for people working at the hospital and surrounding sites.

She referenced Alnbert Einstein’s definition of insanity of doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome.

“Building more roads to this site and through this site, and building a flyover, which is suggested in the paper, through green belt, will not make it easy for people to use the bus,” Cllr Rice said.

Cllr Felicity Rice (Image: BCP Council)

“It will just make congestion worse and more unreliable as we have seen in the past four decades.”

Cllr Dove said what Cllr Rice's statement “further promotes the Unity Alliance stance of concentrating and pushing their rather overbearing promotion of cycling and catching the bus in order to attend the hospital”.

Transport portfolio holder Cllr Mike Greene, Conservative, said the approach being taken by the administration was “pragmatic”.

Cllr Greene said: “This makes sense and I very much hope that the ambition we have had expressed from Cllr Williams and Cllr Dove that the road should be open to all traffic so that no longer does so much that comes in, as Cllr Hadley says, from Hampshire have to go all the way down to the Cooper Dean roundabout or further before turning around.

Cllr Mike Greene (Image: BCP Council)

“That is what doesn’t make sense. The road through this does make sense as does the opportunity for the hospital to receive both its goods if you like and its customers by car or by bus as required.”

The recommendation from cabinet to approve an increased budget for the link road using the futures fund will be voted on at full council in the coming months.