A COACH station plan for High Wycombe – which sparked a bitter running track row – has been put on hold because of Government cutbacks.

The Department for Transport – which would have funded the Handy Cross plan – has put all projects on hold, Buckinghamshire council bosses said.

The ‘coachway’ plan, for next to Wycombe Sports Centre, would have required a running track at the site to move to Sir William Ramsay School, Hazlemere.

But this was scrapped after an outcry and the £25m scheme, which would also re-locate the park and ride from nearby Cressex island, has now been put on ice.

It was hoped the station would have connected the town to major destinations in the South East, including Maidenhead, Reading, Slough and London.

It comes after the Government prepares to outline major spending cuts in tomorrow’s budget. Several UK projects – including a hospital – have already been scrapped.

Transport chief Cllr Valerie Letheren said: “It is on hold. They haven’t said no but they haven’t said yes.

“We still want to find a way of making it happen. It doesn’t look very promising at the moment but it is not definitely thrown out.”

Cllr Letheren, cabinet member for transportation at Buckinghamshire County Council, said it could be ‘downsized’ or cash found through contributions from developers.

Yet she said she had expected the project to win funding as it did not carry a ‘mega’ cost and ‘ticked all the boxes’ needed by Whitehall, such as getting people out of cars.

She said Commons speaker and Buckingham MP John Bercow had pledged to take the matter up with transport secretary Philip Hammond.

But Cllr Lesley Clarke, leader of Wycombe District Council, which owns the land and was backing the project, said she was ‘not surprised’.

“We are working on an alternative to see if we can pull it out of the bag,” she said.

The authority has planning permission for the scheme which includes the track, a neighbouring office development and 150 bedroom hotel.

The plan, to move the track to Hazlemere led to a bitter row between some residents and the council over noise and light pollution fears. It was thrown out by councillors in March.

Cllr Steve Guy, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on WDC, said he saw the need for the coach station.

He said of the track: “The only people who would have suffered would have been users of the running rack on the other side of the town. It would have been very good for the school.”

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