23/9/2009 - Public exhibition to open for Carlisle Northern Development Route : Cumbria County Council

People in Carlisle will get a chance to find out more about the Carlisle Northern Development Route (CNDR) this week, with a public exhibition taking place in the Assembly Rooms of the Old Town Hall on Friday September 25th and Saturday September 26th.

The exhibition, which will be open to the public from 12pm - 7pm on the Friday and 9.30am - 4pm on the Saturday, is designed to inform the public about how Carlisle's most exciting new road project in recent memory will be built and run.

The start of works exhibition is free to all and is designed to inform people about the new road before major construction officially starts next month. It will explain where the road will be built, how the construction programme works, what benefits the road will bring and give people the opportunity to raise any queries they may have with key members of the project team.

The new road is also on the agenda at a series of public meetings and neighbourhood forums so that local people are fully informed:

- 24th September: Wetheral and Stanwix Rural Forum, 7.30pm Linstock Village Hall

- 6th October: Joint Kingmoor and Rockcliffe Parish Council Meeting, 7.30pm Rockcliffe Parish Hall

- 9th - 10th October: West of City Combined Event, Richard Rose Morton Academy (open to staff and students October 9th and the public on October 10th)

- 26th October 2009: Dalston & Cummersdale Forum, 7.00pm Great Orton Village Hall

Earlier this summer Cumbria County Council entered into a 30-year partnership with Connect CNDR to build the new 8.25km (5.13 mile) single-carriageway by-pass and, from October 1st 2009, take on the management and maintenance of a further 148km (92 miles) of existing roads in North Cumbria, namely parts of the A7, A594, A595, A596, A689 and the A6071. From the general public's perspective, the handover on October 1st will be seamless and Cumbria County Council will remain the single point of contact for the public for these roads, with the Highways Hotline still covering the whole of the county council’s 4,784-mile road network.

The total value of the contract is £176m. It has been made possible thanks to Department for Transport approval of £158m worth of PFI (Private Finance Initiative) funding for the scheme. PFI (also known as PPP, or Public Private Partnership) works by the contractor financing the construction of the new road, and then recovering the capital cost over the 30-year life of the contract.