LETTER: Cycle lane cost cannot be right

The only enabling work I have seen carried out is the provision of a temporary fence and some trimming back of trees and shrubs, to cover other unseen work let us assume that £45,000 has been spent, leaving £300,000 for design.

Allowing £50,000 per annum for an engineer or technician this represents six years of design time.

In fact there is very little design involved the land is available, the verge is fairly level, the route follows the line of the A259, there are very few accesses to fields or premises along the route, 20 per cent of the 4.5km is already there, that is the section from Yapton Road to Church Lane, Climping, Comet Corner has recently been covered which only leaves the Yapton Road and Church Lane junctions to be resolved.

Altogether a very simple design problem which a competent engineer should be able to complete in a very short period of time certainly nowhere near the projected time scale of six years.

Either the figures given were incorrect or considerable savings could be made here.