I ATTENDED the General Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting at the Shire Hall and wish to congratulate Cllr Anthony Powers for being the voice of sanity and reason for the majority of people in Hereford.

Like a dog with a bone, he picked apart the bunkum from the consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff, rendering pointless their graphs and colour-coded charts recommending SC2.

They played fast and loose in a bid to overwhelm supporters against SC2, submitting papers at the 11th hour and providing misleading photos of an ancient woodland that they, apparently, don’t consider ‘ancient enough.’ Their speculating and ‘guestimating’ about predicted traffic flows using only desktop analysis (have they ever ventured outside of their offices and seen a real road?) was quite frankly an embarrassment.

They may as well have sucked a finger and held it up to the wind in order to forecast the journeys people make, rather than try to convince us that their office computer can predict who will arrive at A from B and what route they’ll take.

When asked to justify the ‘uncoupling’ of the proposed new road from the Sustainable Transport Max ‘package approach’, they hunted around frantically for post-it notes and old leaflets in a bid to assure the members that they had indeed planned segregated cycle routes and pedestrian crossings for the benefit of Hereford residents. It was clear they had not. And how much will SC2 cost exactly? They didn’t know.

Parsons Brinckerhoff and supporters want the residents of Hereford to wait until a new road is built before they toss them any left-over scraps to consider financing the Transport Max which would actually benefit local residents.

That was not the deal. Voters in favour of spending over £25 million on SC2 should swing by the next meeting and see them in action.

KATE SHARP Haywood Lane Hereford