The Red Route Road Scheme has been scrapped

The joint campaign by North Wales Wildlife Trust and Stamp Out The Red Route to stop the proposed A55-A548 'Red Route' link road, in Flintshire, has been successful!

The Welsh Government has supported the Road Review Panel's recommendation (14 February 2023) to abandon the proposal for a 13km dual carriageway, which would have damaged and destroyed wildlife habitats in its path, including ancient woodland, wildflower meadows, centuries-old hedgerows and other habitats as well as all the species that rely on them including bats, barn owls, badgers and otters.

Read the full update here

More about the Red Route

This was by far the largest new highway proposal in the whole of Wales and the most potentially damaging.

What would the impact of the new highway have been?

The new dual carriageway would have:

caused irreparable damage to our wildlife and landscape heritage - ripping through ancient woodland, wildflower meadows and old hedgerows, right across the landscape
Threatened native species such as bats, owls, great crested newts and badgers
Destroyed massive areas of precious farmland - including an award-winning organic farm - and destroyed viable farm holdings
Damaged businesses and livelihoods.
Severed and damaged local communities

Was a new highway the only option?

Whilst we recognise that there are problems at times with congestion in this area, a new major highway would not have addressed the problems; we are confident that these can be addressed using imaginative sustainable solutions that do not require the creation of a massive new road and instead, help us build a more resilient Wales.

The Route of the Red Route: (opens a PDF from Wales Government website)

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT

We are hugely grateful to everyone who took part in our campaigning through 2020 and 2021 to stop this damaging road development. With your help we were very effective at getting our message to the Welsh Government, elected representatives and election candidates - we couldn't have done it without you! We are confident that this campaign contributed significantly to the Welsh Government's decision to hold the Road Review and support the recommendation to scrap the climate-busting, nature-destroying scheme.

We also thank the 19 organisations that supported our campaign and co-signed our letters to the Welsh Government (You can read the latest letter here).

Otters at Leadbrook Ancient woodland!

Felix Hodgkinson, whose grandfather's farm and woodland would be devastated by the highway, captured footage of an otter on the Lead Brook that runs through the woodland that was threatened by the road. This special and beautiful animal is known to be vulnerable to road deaths and its habitat would have been be severely harmed if the road proposal had proceeded.