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Join us in London on Monday 4 March to present the Department for Transport (DfT) with an ultimatum: either it releases its redacted recommendations about the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) by 5 April or we will peacefully come and get them ourselves!

Monday 4 March, London: The Ultimatum. Join us in London to help issue the ultimatum on a cross-section from one of the trees felled to make way for the BHLR. 12.30pm, outside the Department for Transport (33 Horseferry Rd, London SW1P 4DR).

Monday 11 March, Hastings: Blow the whistle on the Link Road! Help launch our call for public-spirited members of the DfT to leak the Department’s recommendations about the Link Road. 8am, outside the DfT’s Information Rights Unit, Ashdown House, Sedlescombe Road North, TN37 7GA. Whistles provided!

Further actions in March to tbc.

Monday 8 April – Tuesday 9 April: Peaceful document search at the Department for Transport. If the DfT have not released their recommendations by 5 April, then we intend to come and get them ourselves! Contact  operationdisclosure@riseup.net if you are interested in taking part in this action or in playing a support role on the day. Please be aware that being a document searcher carries a risk of arrest. Briefings for all searchers will take place on the evenings of Sunday 7 April and Monday 8 April. Floorspace accommodation will also be available on these evenings.

BACKGROUND

In late 2011 / early 2012 transport minister Norman Baker asked the DfT for its recommendations on funding the £100m Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) – the ‘first and the worst’ of over 190 new road projects that the Government, big business & local councils are pushing throughout England and Wales.

The DfT concluded that East Sussex County Council had “significantly overstate[d] the benefits of the scheme” but its recommendations are being withheld from the public, leading many to speculate that it may have recommended against funding the project, which has now secured provisional government funding of £56m.

Either way, we the public have a right to see what the DfT recommended before work on this environmentally-disastrous white-elephant project becomes unstoppable.

Operation Disclosure is organised by the Combe Haven Defenders:  http://www.combehavendefenders.org.uk , 07926 423 033