National Highways want to close 417 Bike Park!?

Not the kind of update we really want to be giving on our 8th Birthday but we thought it was time for you all to know what’s going on with the A417 Missing Link Project and us, the FlyUp 417 Bike Park. Please help and support us by taking a few seconds to email in your comments to highways@flyupmtb.co.uk.

Hi for those of you who don’t know who I am my name is Angela roskin and I’m the co-founder and director of fly up downhill and 417 bike park and my name is Dave WB I’m the general manager at 417 bike park and a long standing team

Member for 8 years so firstly I don’t think either of us thought we would ever be here announcing something like this especially when only a few days ago the 4 and S bikee Park was celebrating its 8th birthday but here we are you have to bear with us because this isn’t our

Normal setup we’re normally beavering quietly away behind the scenes but we wanted to give you this update direct most of you are probably aware that work has already started on the a417 missing link scheme for those of you that don’t it’s a stretch of road that runs alongside the bike park discussions have

Been ongoing for the past 5 years with a plan to mitigate the impact that the a417 road scheme would have on the bike park and assurances given and plans were agreed which formed part of the dco which was signed off by the Secretary of State Mara I know some of you already

Know what a dco is but for those that don’t I’ll briefly explain dco is an acronym for development consent order it’s basically a planning application governments must have when it is considering a nationally significant infrastructure project or nsip for short within the dco is where all the things like compulsory purchase orders

Temporary land takes actual construction mitigation planting business mitigation Etc it all falls part of the foundation of the application and a boundary line is then drawn to the area this supplies to part of the Assurance is given by highways for the bike park and included in the planning inspector’s report that

Allowed them to gain their powers but to make sure that we could continue running as before this was to be achieved by constructing a new car park in the bottom field with a temporary building that would house all our facilities with the backing of Highway s we then put in

A planning application which is still currently pending and endorsed by national highways which would allow the building to remain permanently as this was cheaper than the temperary option it involved rejigging a few Trails moving a pass and building a new access road and much much more but most importantly it

Allowed the bike part to remain open while they built the new section of a417 perfect solution I’m sure you’ll all agree to the end of November 2023 that was the plan however mid November a change of personnel at National highways me that the assurances given during the dco process were attracted by highways

Without any explanation is from this point everything completely changed and all of a sudden the future of the body depart took a drastic tone we still felt hopeful the national highways would still want to keep our business open as it is now but sadly theyve refused to engage with us regarding an alternative

Solution instead they keep trying to redesign and change the plans without any knowledge of how the bike park or the site operates and due to Absolute exasperation we asked for help from our local MP Lawrence Robertson and it was only with his insistence that highways

Had an onsite meeting with us on the 5th of March it was very clear at this meeting that senior staff at highways and their agents had been seriously misled on the situation here and we had to highlight many times that the current plan that they want to put in place will

Not work throughout the past five years and throughout the whole dco process HS have always been aware any Works they wish to do on the bike park could have serious ramifications to our insurance at this meeting we had to stress to them that their current plan will make this

Site uninsurable and will lead to the closure of the bike park highways left that meeting with promises that they will go away and relook at it and as of today’s day we’re still being ignored and as there’s been no further engagement from National highways or kia the construction company contracted to

Do the works we can only work on the information we’ve been told and that is that the machines will be rolling at some point in the near future regardless sadly we can’t be more exact on when that will be because of Highway’s lack of Engagement we just

Don’t know what their plan is it’s time for highways to put their hands up and admit they’ve got this seriously wrong that the Personnel involved since November 2023 have clearly misunderstood the operations of this bike park which is ultimately going to lead to its closure and they need to do the right

Thing by us and admit they’ve got it wrong they also need to talk to us and let us know know what is happening because it’s left the bike park in a really precarious situation as it stands at this very moment until we do hear from highways we’re open as normal and

We plan to continue to be if you have any bookings with us currently or you’re planning to book in the future please do so with confidence if anything were to happen in the bik par was forced to close refunds would be issued for any bookings that we were unable to fulfill

I just want to take this moment to say thank you to our staff who have all been amazing throughout this entire process and Contin the supporters moving forward at the bike park and lastly I just wanted to say sorry to you guys our customers our suppliers and other

Businesses we work with for keeping you in the dark for so long as you can imagine this is a really complex situation that’s ever evolving at such a fast pace and it’s really difficult to know what the right thing is to do at any given time but now we feel highways

Have left us with no choice but to let you all know what’s going on here finally I guess I’d just like to say thank you for listening to us and ultimately for your support over the last 8 years and into the future the thing that’s never ceased to amaze me

Working here at the bik park is being the amount of incredible people I’ve met so thank you and I guess the next thing is you’re wondering what you can do to help so we would encourage you to have your say on this and we’d be really interested to know what you will think

So there is um an email address linked down below for you to get in touch I know that some of you have a lot of questions and we will do our best to answer as many as we can in the comments but alternatively if you see me on site

When you’re here riding just stop me and i’ be more than happy to chat with you and that’s kind of the update for now guys and we will keep you updated moving forward thank you thank you