"Not one job has been created by building the road. Formal questions to Full Council in February and May 2010 were dodged by the Cabinet Minister responsible when asked and when the questioner followed up with ‘I conclude no jobs have been created as a result of building the Rotherwas Access Road’, it was not denied."

"The independent Inspector of Herefordshire’s Unitary Development Plan stated in 2006, before the road was built, that the need to expand the Rotherwas Industrial Estate had been ‘grossly exaggerated’. Large parts of Rotherwas estate were and are empty."

"When the lead official on this scheme from AWM was asked under Freedom of Information for the minutes of the meeting on how the decision was reached to fund the road and estate, the response was – there was no meeting, there were no notes from any telephone conversations. There was no way for the public to understand how the decision had been made."

"Grants of £10m or more are scrutinised by Government Office West Midlands, [but] this particular grant was £9.5m. There was no way for this decision to be scrutinised by any Government body on the grounds of value for money. The grant being under £10m did no have to adhere to the ‘Treasury Green Book Guidance’ to justify the money spent. "

"The whole ‘Rotherwas Futures’ package was £17.5m of which AWM gave £9.5m. If every business on the estate (AWM figures say there are 146) were given £119,000 to spend on their business – the cost of the development, it seems likely they would create more jobs and more innovation than the nil jobs this road created. The Council have increased their borrowing to meet the costs and are relying on future rents and future rent increases to pay it back."

The ‘Edgar Street Grid’ (ESG) is a controversial scheme to redevelop the north part of Hereford city and has attracted AWM funding of £20m. There is considerably disquiet from local people about the new retail development – what effect it will have on existing businesses who must re-locate, on the existing shops and on the traffic. A campaign opposing ESG (called Its Our City) has a strong following and delivered an 11,000 signed petition, ignored by the Council and the ESG board, calling for a halt to the plans."

"Herefordshire people have not been asked if they want the new development. It was not part of election literature at the last election, and in the ongoing ‘Local Development Framework’ plan, it is assumed that it will happen. There is no consultation on do people want it at all. All the exhibitions and ‘consultations’ are about convincing people it is a good thing."

"People complain that on smaller funding schemes (LEADER, the small business grant); AWM is over bureaucratic and therefore difficult. Many forms are required during and at the end of the grant to justify the money. It is a considerable burden on organisations and small businesses applying. Employees that don’t have staff specifically set to the task are put at a considerable disadvantage."

"There is a clear imbalance; on small schemes there is an over justification for money spent, on the large schemes (as set out above), there is virtually no justification. This is typical of large hierarchical organisations, too timid to challenge large things but over zealous with small organisations."

Ms Roseff concluded: "AWM has brought a distorting influence to bear on planning and local democracy that has an adverse effect on the county. They has a great deal of money and their schemes are generally large and environmentally damaging (the Rotherwas Road for example went through an Area of Great Landscape Beauty, ESG is converting half the City of Hereford, adding to car parking and creating new roads)."

"The organisation is impenetrable, in spite of a large website with many documents, it is very hard to find how much money has been spent on what, these answers in our experience come from Freedom of Information requests."

"In areas like Herefordshire the RDA money should be brought back under democratic control, or, more preferably grants should be allocated by government officials (such as GOWM) who abide by long established and developing policies that are guided by value for money, fairness and sustainability principles."

Even the sages who predicted it would never happen must have been taken by surprise by the speed with which ESG’s Link Road dream seems to have disappeared into thin air. Thanks in no small measure to the axe-wielding George Osborne, one suspects.

As half-baked, ill-conceived masterplans go, this one was a 24ct clinker from the word go. Less than 1km long, yet warranting five sets of traffic lights along its dual-single carriageway route and non-conforming cycleways, it would have taken three years to build, displaced dozens of established businesses and made hundreds jobless.

No other planning proposal in the history of Herefordshire Council has ever attracted so many letters of objection (plus It’s Our City’s 10,000-name petition). Yet Hereford Civic Society’s 33-page technical report, which had taken over 200 hours to research and compile, was reduced to an 86-word summary in the Planning Committee’s papers for their meeting last March. ESG’s costs in mounting this planning application are unknown, but are likely to have been in the region of £250,000.

So who will be the winners and losers in the likely demise of this unwanted strip of tarmac?

The principal beneficiaries should have been users of public transport, since it was originally mooted (by the local pressure group Rail for Herefordshire (RfH)) among others that the opportunity to build a true transport interchange should be taken.

Rail travellers coming into the city’s Grade II-listed station, it argued, should be able to transfer seamlessly to a network of integrated bus routes, both urban and rural; or pick up taxis; or be collected by car; or even rent a car, perhaps for a touring holiday in the Wye Valley; or ride off on their own bikes – or even on a rented one. All these activities, plus through-ticketing offices and electronic information arrays, would be enclosed within a new structure, designed in sympathy with the Victorian station building. But RfH’s suggestion fell on deaf ears.

RfH chairman Cllr Gerald Dawe describes the ESG scheme, unveiled at a special ‘consultation workshop’ in February 2009 (styled by the developer as a Transport Hub, as showing “a planning ability straight out of the 1960s.” HCS chairman Garry Thomas was so incensed that he walked out of the meeting, branding it “a sham”.

Europe has some fine transport interchange buildings – Holland and Germany boasting several architectural masterpieces; the Campaign for Better Transport cites Bangor, Corby, (London) Stratford East and Walsall as exemplars closer to home. The plan for Hereford was simply an asphalted forecourt with a weather-protected bus stand and some plants in IKEA pots.

Of the possible loss of the Link Road, It’s Our City founder Mark Hubbard is less sanguine. “The Advantage West Midlands funding is already in place for Phase I (the westernmost section, due to run from Edgar Street to Widemarsh Street) and I don’t think even George Osborne could take it back.”

“Having once made a start on the project, ESG’s planning permission (for the whole road) is then, in effect, in perpetuity, meaning Phases II and III could be years away. So this would leave all the presently-blighted businesses along Station Approach in limboland for years. Remember, it was only at the beginning of this summer that the Prime Minister warned that the cuts will affect the whole country for many years, possibly even a decade”.

Doubts over the present administration’s plans to press ahead with a city by-pass (or Outer Distributor Road) have also been highlighted recently, following the Secretary of State for Transport’s written statement to Parliament that he was taking steps to avoid any expenditure while the government considered its transport priorities. All road building schemes granted conditional approval by the last administration are to be reviewed as part of the current spending review.

In other letters residents question why the Council wastes our money on the propaganda machine that is 'Herefordshire Matters', which this time wrongly tells Herefordians that the choice is between a bypass on the west or east.