The leader of Bradford on Avon Town Council leader has accused Wiltshire Council of crocodile tears over its response to the Bath Clean Air Zone.

Dom Newton of the Ideal Bradford group said he was astonished at the “apparent rage boiling over.”

He said that in 2018 he attended meetings with Bath & North East Somerset Council to discuss the clean air zone. At that time he expressed many of the concerns voiced by unitary councillors – even going as far as to support a judicial review.

Bath Clean Air Zone

Bath Clean Air Zone

“Interesting, then, that the situation does not seem to have moved on since that meeting, and yet no further support has been requested by Wiltshire Council in tackling this issue, even while the BaNES scheme has contracted in scope to exclude cars altogether,” he said.

He claimed the only reason party names were drawn into the argument was due to the looming May elections, but adding that this does not excuse the “inaction” of the Liberal Democrat run B&NES council.

Instead, Cllr Newton said that the political point scoring does nothing to address the high volumes of traffic rumbling through the town’s narrow streets.

Heavy Good vehicles on A350 Westbury Photo Trevor Porter

Heavy Good vehicles on A350 Westbury Photo Trevor Porter

“This needs to be addressed systemically, and by Wiltshire Council, “ he said. “So to paraphrase a famous quotation – the question is not what B&NES can do for Wiltshire, but what Wiltshire will actually, finally, bother to do for itself,” he said.

The criticism comes less than a month after a report was published by the unitary council on the improvement of air quality on Masons Lane. Cllr Newton said he cannot think of any action Wiltshire Council has taken to achieve it.

Masons Lane VIA GOOGLE MAPS

Masons Lane VIA GOOGLE MAPS

He believed they were very likely a happy accident or down to “technological improvements in vehicles themselves”.

Deputy leader of Wiltshire Council, Richard Clewer said BaNES had simply not worked with it’s neighbours, taking three months to reply to a letter in one instance. “If you put a clean air zone in you can’t just export it to a neighbouring authority, and it makes me really angry,” he said. “There is the election element but they’ve refused to engage. It’s only just blowing up now. I would be making exactly the same point whenever it would have happened.

Coun Richard Clewer

Coun Richard Clewer

Cllr Clewer added there was no sitting down to discuss the issues now the clean air zone is in effect, but the council was considering options for further action. He said: “It’s extremely difficult to see a way of resolving this.”