Ms Deborah Meghan:

As I said earlier, the North-South project has been set up considerably longer than the other two, Grid West and Grid Link. When we withdrew from the application process in 2010 we went to a re-evaluation process on the entire project and part of that was publishing a number of reports, which closely equate to the reports we publish today on the existing projects such as the stage 1 and stage 2 reports. We published a preliminary re-evaluation report in 2011, which gave all the information about the project from the study area, all the route corridors to the preferred corridor and we asked for comment and feedback on that. We then issued a final re-evaluation report this year in which we sought comment on all aspects such as the study area, the corridors, technology and everything that had gone before in that regard.

During the later part of the summer, we moved to the final stage, in line with Stage 3 of our roadmap, which is about confirming design, when we issued the third project solutions report and looked to doing the detail, that is, considering the devil in the detail at that point, by considering specific design requirements and communicating and dealing with landowners in that regard. We now move into Stage 4, which is the preparation for our planning application. Although some reports may not state they are Stage 1 or Stage 2 reports, they have been quite closely aligned to the new roadmap, taking into account the history of the North-South project itself. There has been quite extensive consultation on that in the past two to three years.