Tameside Council's 90% Claim is Pure Propaganda

24th November 2005

Tameside Council's claim that 90% of the local population support the bypass is based on here-say and not fact. Having recently placed an advert in local papers asking for supporters to return a form, they are now claiming that the response demonstrates overwhelming support for the scheme.

Local campaigners against the Glossop Spur and Mottram-Tintwistle road programmes say the advert that Tameside placed in local papers - costing over £1000 of taxpayers money - asked only for supporters of the scheme to return the form and was, therefore, clearly not intended as a balanced consultation exercise. They are calling on the Council to publish a similar advert asking for people who do not support the scheme to respond.

A spokesperson for the Save Swallow's Wood campaign said:

"Given that the advert would have reached over 160,000 people with 10,000 of these resident in Glossop and Longdendale a response of just 260 is pretty poor. Were Tameside willing to face reality, they would have to admit that 260 people represents a 2.6% response from local people in favour of the scheme and less than 0.2% in favour across the Borough - nowhere near to 90% by any stretch of the imagination. On these grounds they should consider withdrawing their support for this damaging scheme and instead focus on an HGV ban, improving public transport and reducing impacts of the school run on traffic congestion."

For more information, contact: Emma Lawrence, 0845 226 3392