ANTI-PRISON campaigners have launched a new video showing the “inappropriateness” of the rural road network surrounding the proposed site at Wethersfield airbase.

The proposal for a Category B training prison and a Category C resettlement prison to accommodate around 1,700 prisoners each was revealed more than a year ago.

The community is still waiting to see if the Ministry of Justice is going to submit a formal planning application for the proposals.

SWAP - Stop Wethersfield Airfield Prisons – is campaigning against the proposals.

Now, the group has launched a video demonstrating how “inappropriate” the rural road network is around the north Essex countryside.

Essex County Council had previously voiced concerns about the plans, having issued a letter of response to the consultation in September 2021.

It said the concerns stemmed from a number of issues, including its remoteness from the strategic road network and poor connectivity to the strategic network via B-roads and unclassified roads, which pass through picturesque rural villages unused to high volumes of traffic.

Essex Police also responded to the consultation in October 2021 over concerns of safety.

The force said: “Nationally, rural roads have the highest level of loss of life through road traffic collisions.

“The Wethersfield site is in a rural part of Essex fed by B-Roads. Existing data on the B1053 highlights a high number of collisions involving injury over the past five years.

The network of roads is not suitable to cope with the increased level of traffic during the construction or post-opening phase of the project without improvements.”

SWAP chairman Alan MacKenzie said: “We hope this video gets across the folly of trying to place a massive development in one of the most remote areas in the country in terms of distance from the strategic road network.

“Anyone who is already familiar with the rural road network around this area knows just how unsuitable it is for volumes of traffic and especially of HGVs which would plague the district, including the towns and Braintree itself, for ten years to build two prisons.

“The consequences for road traffic accidents on narrow, winding, roads does not bear thinking about given Essex Police has stated that rural roads already have the highest level of loss of life through road traffic collisions.”

The video can be found at https://bit.ly/3J8Fuuo.