Grantham Southern Relief Road project - Find a freedom of information request

Lincolnshire County Council's website state that the aims and benefits of the Grantham Southern Relief Road project are to: reduce congestion, disruption, and delays; create a safer, more attractive and accessible town centre; provide opportunities for growth; reduce carbon emissions and noise pollution. I am requesting details of:

1. How these aims and benefits will be measured to ensure that they are both achieved and sustained in order to ensure that the project's aims are met;

2. The baseline (as is) data for each of these aims and benefits and the forecast data for each of these aims and benefits following the completion of the Grantham Southern Relief Road Project and the forecast data for each of the aims and benefits had the Grantham Southern Relief Road project not been approved;

3. Any resourced plans to ensure that these aims and benefits are realised and sustained (including any wider projects if they are to be realised as part of a programme or portfolio of which the Grantham Southern Relief Road is a component) in particular, what action is being planned to ensure that the road capacity of the current infrastructure that is freed by routing traffic via the southern relief road is not taken up by other vehicles on shorter local journeys.

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1. As part of the funding bid process there is a requirement for the Authority to provide post completion Monitoring and Evaluation data, this will be a minimum of 1 year post full scheme completion. The exact required data gets refined with the funding body at the point of completing the scheme, but it will likely elements such as traffic flow, change in traffic priority, junctions queue length, development land unlocked, etc.

2. Unsure of the exact data that is required, however I feel it will be simpler to direct you to the scheme web page which has a huge level of information regarding this request in the various links across the following page: https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/majorprojects/grantham-southern-relief-road

3. Part of the benefits of this road is that it unlocks housing and development land, therefore a good portion of the relief this scheme will provide will be absorbed by the traffic that the housing and developments attract. This has always been the case and is outlined on the Local Plan and business case for the project. It is however worth stressing that the development will be over a medium to long period of time and therefore in opening year and many years after that the relief will be significant.

There are projects that are being considered at a concept high level to take the opportunity in the centre of Grantham once traffic is relieved, however these are not declared schemes, have no policy position and therefore there is nothing to share until they are.