Buckinghamshire Council gave up building it in November 2025 after spending £5.5m of a £12m grant. Its draft Local Plan now makes 2,895 new homes deliver it.
Buckinghamshire Council is not going to build the Princes Risborough relief road. It decided that ten months ago, and its draft Local Plan now expects 2,895 new homes to build it instead.
Both halves of that sentence are on the public record, in two documents most people have never opened. Neither is a rumour and neither is new. What is new is that the plan carrying the second half is now closed to comment and heading for a Planning Inspector.
What the council actually decided
Cabinet met on Tuesday 11 November 2025 and took a formal decision on the Princes Risborough Southern Road Link, which is phase 1 of the relief road. It resolved:
- that no further steps be taken to pursue the planning application, and that all negotiations with Network Rail cease
- that no further steps be taken on the land acquisition, Compulsory Purchase Order and Side Roads Order approved by Cabinet in November 2021
- that an existing capital budget of £1,467,697 be used for ongoing work, including making the Little Kimble Cottages safe and secure, and continuing to run the Buckinghamshire transport model against the whole expansion area
The report put it plainly. The scheme “is currently stalled”, the council “can no longer carry out the construction”, and “it is now anticipated that the road will be constructed by developers wishing to progress housing development in the Expansion Area”.
The money ran out, and then the clock did
The funding was Homes England Housing Infrastructure Funding, secured in 2018 by the former Wycombe District Council. The Corporate Director for Planning, Growth and Sustainability set out the position to Cabinet:
- the grant was just over £12 million, to be spent by March 2023
- the council had spent just under £5.5 million of it
- the March 2023 deadline passed, putting the council outside the contractual timeframe
- Homes England offered two options: the council withdraws from the agreement, or Homes England terminates it and exercises its right to recover money already spent
Costs were the original problem. Price inflation meant a Cabinet paper in late 2021 already said the council could not deliver the road. Spending stopped in early 2023 and staff moved to other work. Negotiations with the expansion area’s developers ran from summer 2023 to autumn 2024, trying to get the road built as part of their applications. In late 2024 the developers confirmed it would not happen in the near future.
What the council’s own road would have been
The application the council has now abandoned was modest next to the scheme people picture. The report describes it as a two lane, single carriageway link road of about 750 metres, starting at Picts Lane near the junction of Goodearl Place and running north to the former Sumitomo Electric Hardmetal site, with a new signalised junction at Station Approach and two new railway underpasses. It reached an advanced stage. Permission was never granted.
That matters for the argument now going on about the route, because Picts Lane was in the council’s own phase 1 from the start.
What the draft Local Plan says
The Draft Local Plan for Buckinghamshire, published on 23 July 2026, allocates 177.2 hectares at Princes Risborough for up to 2,895 dwellings, under the reference NESS010. Clause 3 of that allocation reads:
Development will deliver the Princes Risborough Relief Road and associated works, as safeguarded by policy TR2 and shown on the Policies Map, which will provide a complete new alternative route to the A4010.
Policy TR2 safeguards it as running “between Shoot acre Lane junction with A4010 and Grove Lane junction with A4010 via the NESS site”. The plan’s supporting text at paragraph 6.110 says the allocation will deliver a Princes Risborough Infrastructure Package that includes the relief road, that smaller sites must make “proportionate equitable contributions” to it, and that “developers will be required to coordinate the delivery of these requirements”.
A second, much smaller allocation does the same job at the other end. PRI01, land at Princes Risborough station, is allocated for 80 homes and must safeguard and deliver a route through the site. The plan explains that this link, between Summerleys Road and Picts Lane, “will relieve traffic on Poppy Road” and let passing traffic avoid the Station Road junction with Picts Lane.
The written policy gives junctions, not lanes. The alignment itself is on the Policies Map, and Figure 15 of the plan, headed “Indicative Princes Risborough Relief Road”, shows a single line running from the A4010 south of the town, north through the allocation west of Princes Risborough and on past Monks Risborough towards Little Kimble.
The objection, from the MP, in his own words
Greg Smith, the MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, published his consultation response on his own website on 4 September 2026. On the route he wrote:
The proposal to reroute the A4010 along Shootacre Lane and Picts Lane is mind-numbingly preposterous.
He says that when the route was examined during earlier Local Plan work, “over £1.2 million was spent on a feasibility study that ultimately demonstrated it would NOT be practical”, and that the lanes are “narrow country lanes and totally unsuited to form part of the A4010 strategic road network”. His formal comment on policy TR2 asks that “policy should revert to the previously agreed re-alignment”. We have not been able to verify the £1.2 million figure against a council document, and report it as his statement.
His response objects to the allocation more broadly, on the loss of 177 hectares of farmland, flooding from streams south of the town, and the visual impact on the Chilterns National Landscape.
The concern raised inside the council was different but points the same way. At the November Cabinet, Councillor Gary Hall, a ward member for Princes Risborough, said the A4010 was a major north to south route linking Aylesbury and High Wycombe, that Princes Risborough had become a bottleneck, and that his key worry was now “that housing developments might proceed without the road being built”.
The council’s Corporate Director answered that the road is required by the development plan, so it is expected to be delivered, but that “it would be for housing developers to come forward and demonstrate, should they choose to do so, that further housing could be provided without the need for the road”.
Two things in the plan that do not add up
The draft plan is 450 pages and is due to go to a Planning Inspector. Two small things in the Princes Risborough sections are worth flagging, because an Inspector will be asked about exactly this sort of thing.
- The NESS010 allocation says at clause 2 that development “will include 11 net additional serviced Gypsy and Traveller pitches”. Clause 5(d) of the same allocation says development must “retain and provide 6 net additional serviced Gypsy and Traveller and Travelling Showpeople provision”.
- Paragraphs 6.415 and 6.416 are the same paragraph, printed twice, word for word, on consecutive pages.
What is still open, and until when
The main consultation ran from 23 July to 11.59pm on Sunday 6 September 2026 and has closed. Late representations “cannot normally be accepted”.
But the council has reopened a narrow window, because it got its own paperwork wrong. It says that since the consultation went live, “we have identified that supporting evidence documents, of a technical nature, were not uploaded correctly to the consultation webpages at the start of the consultation”. Comments on five of those documents were extended:
| Document | Comments close |
|---|---|
| Bucks Strategic Transport Model 2, Present Year Validation, phases 1 and 2 | 20 October 2026 |
| Bucks Strategic Transport Model 2, Model Development and Validation Report, appendices M and N | 20 October 2026 |
| Bucks Strategic Transport Model 2, Variable Demand Model Development and Validation Report | 20 October 2026 |
| Green Belt Assessment appendix 7, irreplaceable habitat | 20 October 2026 |
| Land Availability Assessment appendix 5, Gypsy and Travellers call for sites | Closed 20 September 2026 |
Four of the five are the county’s traffic model. That is the evidence base underneath a relief road argument, and it is the only part of this plan anyone can still comment on. Representations must relate only to the impact of those specific documents, and go to the council’s planning policy team at planningpolicyteam.bc@buckinghamshire.gov.uk.
What happens next
A Secretary of State direction set the timetable, and the council’s own consultation FAQ states it: “Regulation 19 consultation by 23 July 2026 and submission by 31 December 2026”. After that, an independent Planning Inspector examines the plan, considers every duly made representation, and may recommend main modifications before it can be adopted.
Anyone who objected and asked to take part in the examination hearings will be considered by the Inspector, who decides who is invited.
What it means for you
- The road is still policy. It is required by the adopted Wycombe District Local Plan and its supplementary planning document, both from 2021, and it is safeguarded again in the draft plan. The council stepping back from building it does not delete it.
- The question is sequencing. The council’s own officer accepted that developers may try to show housing can come forward without the road, and that the council would then have to assess that. That is the risk local members raised in November.
- Your comment window is narrow and technical. Only the five documents above are open, four of them the traffic model, and only until 20 October.
- The next real decision point is the examination. Everything submitted in the consultation goes to the Inspector, not back to councillors.
- Planning applications in the area appear on the council’s weekly lists. We track them on High Wycombe planning news, and the A4010 and the town’s roads on High Wycombe roadworks and travel.
Sources
- Cabinet, 11 November 2025, item 13: Princes Risborough Southern Road Link and Princes Risborough Expansion Area, Buckinghamshire Council, for the resolution, the minutes, the Homes England funding position, the £1,467,697 capital budget and the comments from Councillor Gary Hall and the Corporate Director for Planning, Growth and Sustainability.
- Report for Cabinet, 11 November 2025 for the description of the withdrawn phase 1 application: 750 metres, Picts Lane at Goodearl Place, the Station Approach signalised junction and the two railway underpasses.
- Draft Local Plan for Buckinghamshire, Regulation 19, July 2026 for allocation NESS010 at pages 133 to 139, policy TR2 at page 393, allocation PRI01 at pages 240 to 242, paragraph 6.110 and Figure 15.
- Draft Local Plan for Buckinghamshire 2045 (Regulation 19 consultation) and its frequently asked questions for the consultation dates, the extended deadlines on the five technical documents, the representations email address and the Secretary of State direction.
- Response to the Buckinghamshire Local Plan Regulation 19 Consultation, Greg Smith MP, 4 September 2026, and the consultation response attached to it, for his objection to the route and to the allocation.
All documents read on 23 September 2026.
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