In 2020, when these organisations were asked to provide a report for the Rampion 2 project, the focus of the substation site reports was mainly around the existing substation at Bolney. 

Now, the planned substation will be at Oakendene near Cowfold, accessed directly from the A272, which as you will know, is quite a different road from Wineham Lane. It is used by 18000 vehicles per day and the particular stretch in question is an accident hotspot. Also, it is very congested with daily tailbacks at peak times and whenever there are any hold ups along the route.

Not surprisingly West Sussex Highways did not flag up any concerns about this in 2020. Nor did Royal Mail, but just imagine the problems for your postman and parcel deliveries

On looking at the reports from Rampion you can see that, although they mention the 3 alternative substation sites, the data they actually provide is based on Wineham as the main location, not Oakendene, which is simply, in the data, described as a temporary construction site:

See here go to p68 Table 24-18 Assessment options for onshore PEIR Assessment

Nowhere in relation to the A272, only Wineham Lane, is there any mention of temporary traffic lights, or vehicles turning on and off the road onto the substation site. In their traffic assessment the A272 is just looked at as a road along which the HGVs travel to get to Wineham. An extra 8000 HGVs travelling along the A272 over three to six years may not sound that much, but imagine each one slowing down and holding up the traffic to turn off the road onto Oakendene every 15 minutes (Rampion’s figures when assessing Wineham Lane). In fact, this makes the assumption of 7am to 7pm working. Given that the traffic at peak times is already unmanageable at this point on the A272, access would have to be reduced to 9am to 3pm, meaning one every 7.5 minutes, then the HGVs would need to come back out again, reducing the interval to every 3-4 minutes. This will cause appalling tailbacks and side roads being used as rat runs. 

Their assessment of the A272 east of Cowfold, is simply based on its being used to turn off to Wineham lane and does not focus on any particular section between Cowfold and the A23. There is absolutely no assessment of traffic impact, pollution in the Cowfold AQMA, driver delay and economic impact, noise or road safety based on what is now intended. 

The planning Inspectorate said “It should be noted that if the Proposed Development materially changes prior to submission of the DCO application, the Applicant may wish to consider requesting a new scoping opinion. “

They have not, we believe, asked WSCC to do this based on Oakendene as the site. Nor, incredibly have they re-evaluated the traffic, accident, driver delay or other traffic impact assessments they initially carried out. This means that nobody had that crucial information available to them to make an informed choice of site-certainly not Rampion themselves!