One of my Facebook followers asked whether the future of the A326 road widening scheme is at risk following the Government’s announcement today that they intend scrapping a number of such schemes in favour spending more money on defence and maintaining existing infrastructure.

This prompted me to try and find out whether the A326 is one of the schemes likely to be dropped.

Unfortunately, only Government knows which schemes are going to be axed, an announcement follows. All that I can say is that it seems very likely…. given that it is a scheme that does not enjoy universal support and hasn’t, as yet, got through the planning stage.

Of course, I will feel a little sorry for all those Officers who were involved in such a lot of work, undertaking the consultations, the design work, the environmental impact assessments, putting together the business case, etc.

My own “well known” opinion is that it was really ever a project that was likely to benefit Associated British Ports…. as one of my followers said today… it should have been called “The Port Access Scheme” as opposed to the misleading “A326 Improvement Scheme”.

The New Forest would be better served by maintaining our roads better and improving public transport options