A HEREFORDSHIRE resident who has long campaigned against the Southern Link Road has raised concerns about why a council document about sustainable travel was marked 'confidential' before the road's planning approval was given.

Kate Sharp, who believes the proposed road between the A49 and A465 is a waste of money, said a transport survey called Destination Hereford was kept from the public eye before the planning committee discussed the road in June.

She said the report had been marked confidential and it was not until a question from the public that the report was made widely available in September.

The transport survey revealed that car trips in Hereford had reduced by four per cent over a three year period between 2012 and 2015.

Herefordshire Council was awarded £4.97 million from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund for the Destination Hereford project from 2011 to 2015 with the overall aim to reduce congestion and improve journey choices.

Ms Sharp said: "I suggest it was a deliberate act to keep the report out of the papers and public arena until after the planning decision.

"Let’s not forget that the DH report found that for very little ‘spend’ on sustainable transport measures, folks were minded to leave their cars at home.

"This would perhaps have been a bit awkward to try to explain away just a week before the council voted to spend £27m on a new road."

She said a relatively low cost spend on sustainable travel already saw a reduction in car trips, compared to a large amount of money being spent on a new road.

But Michelle Morgan, spokesman for Herefordshire Council, said it was a simple drafting error when the document was marked confidential and uploaded to the council website in May and it was fully accessible and readable from the moment it was uploaded.

She said it was publicly available prior to the planning decision.

She added: "The evaluation demonstrates that Destination Hereford was a worthwhile project. However it does not conclude that the growth requirements for Hereford can be achieved by behavioural change alone. "It has been demonstrated that this can only be delivered by a complementary approach to providing additional highway infrastructure alongside measures to encourage modal shift away from car use.

"The importance of delivering both the road and the complementary package was made clear to the planning committee when they considered the application for the Southern Link Road in June 2016."

The council said the South Wye transport package has a budget on current estimated costs of £35 million pounds, of which £27 million will come from the Department of Transport. The further £8 million is and has been in the council budget and will fund the active travel as described as part of the recent public consultation.

The total £35 million is the estimated cost of the whole package.