HC Deb 15 March 1960 vol 619 cc1261-70

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]

9.35 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence (Dunbartonshire, East)

I make no apology for raising on the Adjournment a very important problem that exists in the village of Condorrat in the County of Dunbarton. The story as it has been given to me verbally—I have no documentary evidence, since the lady concerned seems to have no documents—is this. The lady and her husband have held the ground in question since 1912. The husband left and the lady is now in a cottage with responsibility for a son who suffers from a rare disease, as a consequence of which he has had over a hundred fractures of his very brittle bones. This boy, therefore, is quite unemployable.

Prior to the construction of the new Glasgow-Stirling Road, the A.80, this cottage was on ground capable of cultivation. The idea was to develop it as a nursery so that the mother could leave provision for her son when she died. As a result of the new road being built, they lost some of their land. Some of the ground has been worked upon by building contractors, and any idea that they had of developing the ground as a nursery is now out of the question. The Department in Edinburgh acquired a piece of land south of the B.802 road for which this lady's husband received, I am told, £235, which seems a hopelessly inadequate sum. Part of the flyover bridge over the Glasgow-Stirling Road is built on land belonging to this lady for which she received no compensation at all, according to her statement. The lady informs me that compensation for the land on which part of the bridge was built was paid to the Campbell Trust. She received no payment for that small piece of land.

Having lost the possibility of developing a nursery, this lady, on behalf of her son, conceived the idea of a petrol and service station. She obtained planning permission from the Dunbarton County Council to construct a garage on the site of the cottage. The cottage is enclosed in a narrow strip of land running alongside the A.80. She was given planning permission, subject to the approval of the Department in Edinburgh, to have access to the Glasgow— Stirling road.

She has told me—I do not know what she does with the letters that she receives —that she has been granted access only to the B.802, the secondary road, which, by a flyover crosses the Glasgow—Stirling Road, but, unfortunately, the level of the B.802 has been raised to accommodate the flyover. As a consequence, the cottage on the site of which it was proposed that a garage should be built lies at the immediate foot of a gradient of 1 in 8½ which runs at a direct angle to the B.802. No motorist in his senses would take a car down that gradient to fill up with petrol.

I have been out and seen the site and the gradient. I have been driving cars for years, but I would not take a car down there to fill up with petrol. I would go down on foot with a can and carry it back, but I would not take my car down there. It is a waste of time for the lady to have a garage built, because there is no access to the trunk road.

In reply to my Question last week, the Joint Under-Secretary of State told me that the question of granting permission for access to and from the road was considered on safety grounds. I recognise that. I cannot, however, understand why this exit and access on the Glasgow-Stirling Road is refused on safety grounds while in the Borough of Clydebank, a few years ago, an hotel was built on the Glasgow-Dumbarton Road, a fast motorway between Glasgow and Loch Lomond and very busy in the summer. Whatever people may say, in the summer all roads lead to Loch Lomond.

An hotel was built with access to that road. I swear that I will never take my car on that road again on New Year's Eve after about ten o'clock. Why access was granted, I do not know. If I had been in the Department in Edinburgh, there would have been an awful row, because I object to public houses being built on these roads in any case. But there it is. Now, however, when a service station is applied for to enable motorists to fill up with petrol, access to the so-called motor road is refused on the ground of danger. This seems to me complete nonsense.

Let us consider the site. The garage lies down a 40–50 ft. bank from the road. The length of the plot is about 55 ft. 6 in. The roadway down to the garage would have a 30-degree run-in and similarly a 30-degree exit, which is quite safe. The road engineer of the contractors states that it is an ideal site for a service station, and yet permission has been refused.

It is nonsense to say that permission has been refused for other garages on the road. It may have been refused, but there are already other garages on the road. There are garages further along the road in each direction. Therefore, why this lady should be refused a service station when there are other similar places on the road some eight or nine miles away in both directions, I cannot understand.

Next comes the safety factor. In the centre of the A.80, there is a central reservation. In parts of the road there are gaps in the reservation where motorists can cross. I am the first to admit that if a garage is sited on a road near a break in the central reservation where motorists can make a U-turn across the road and into the garage, that can be dangerous. On this section of the road the central reservation is unbroken and no motorist travelling from Stirling to Glasgow would cut across to this garage, because of that central reservation. Anyone wanting to cross to the garage would have to go a long way down the road before making a U-turn, which is something no motorist would do. As a motorist, I deplore the practice of crossing central reservations to get to a garage on the other side. It is a bad practice which no doubt causes many accidents, but the Under-Secretary need not have any worries on that score, because there is no break in the reservation for some distance.

This young lad, a fine well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed boy of 15, has had more than a hundred fractures. No one will employ him. He is quite unemployable. The slightest accident will cause a fracture. The road leading to the cottage where he and his mother live has a gradient of 1 in 1—, which is most dangerous for him. He is afraid to go over that ground for fear that he falls, because a fall means another fracture. The gradient is due to the construction of a fly-over.

This cottage and the piece of land which they cultivated and from which they earn their living were all that the boy and his mother had in the world. They are cut off by the road and if they want to get to the village without going up the bank to the old road, where the gradient is 1 in 9 or 1 in 10, which the boy does not use because he is liable to fall and have another fracture, they have to go up to the B.802. So the poor boy is confined to the cottage with no opportunity to earn a living. His only chance is to have this service station at which he could employ a petrol pump attendant and where he could sit in the office taking care of the financial side of the business.

It is heart-rending to see a bright and intelligent young boy in this difficulty. He and his mother are completely frustrated about doing something to help him earn his living. His mother has sole responsibility and has no one to share it. Her assets are few. It may be that the Under-Secretary will say that she can appeal. However, an appeal is a costly business. I told her that it might not be costly, but she said that it might be and that she might have to make several appeals. She said that she did not have the money for lawyers and for appeals and that all her resources had to be devoted to investments for this boy, especially for this service station, so that he could at least keep the wolf from the door. She is quite sincere in this. She does not want her boy to be dependent on the charity of the State or anybody else when she dies. She wants him to be able to get his own living. They naturally feel that they could have done that had the road not been put through, because they had their nursery. But what was once a nursery is now a bank of clay where the road has been built up to go over the fly-over.

I hope that the Under-Secretary will have an inquiry into exactly what has happened to this mother and her son. It is evident that they have had a raw deal. According to what she told me, her husband, who left her with this responsibility, signed an agreement and accepted £235 for this piece of land which, from their point of view, is very valuable. Anyone who saw the place and spoke to the woman and the boy would realise that they were two ordinary humble people, without any knowledge of the law or education, but just good, honest people. Had they had a wider knowledge of the law and of the way that things are done they might have got much more than they did.

In the interests of the concept of fair play and justice, even for the most humble people in the land, I beg the Minister to see that something is done immediately to improve their position. The access to the B.802 is impossible with a gradient of 1 in 8½. It is no use as a service road to a garage. Any idea that it constitutes a danger on the main Glasgow-Stirling Road carries no weight. The road is not a motorway in the sense of the Birmingham-London Motorway or the Preston Bypass. There are roads into it. There is the road to Kirkintilloch from Airdrie. There are intersections into it all the way to Stirling. That is unavoidable because of established roads and residences and all sorts of interests along the road as one goes into Glasgow or Stirling.

Granting access to this road is vital. Planning permission has been given to build a garage. To allow the garage to be built and then say that no access to it will be provided is tantamount to refusing planning permission. I have no doubt that all those concerned in the Department in Edinburgh feel compassion towards this family. I am sure that there is nothing in any of our regulations to prevent the Department of Agriculture from authorising Mrs. Doherty, on behalf of her son, to go ahead with her garage and to have access to the Glasgow-Stirling Road.

9.53 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Niall Macpherson)

The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) has raised a case which quite naturally must rouse compassion in the heart of everyone who has heard what he said, but I am bound to put the history of the matter. It would be fair to divide what the hon. Gentleman said into two parts. First, what he said about general policy for the siting of petrol stations on trunk roads. Secondly, what he said about the particular application, and the policy in the case he raised.

The history of the case is this. With one or two minor disagreements I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said, but I think that I ought to recapitulate the case. In August, 1958, Mrs. Doherty applied to the Dunbarton County Council for planning approval to erect a petrol station on her land alongside the line of the Condorrat bypass which forms part of the new dual carriage road being constructed from the Glasgow city boundary to a point north of Denny, a distance of about 16 miles. In December, 1959, after consultation with the Scottish Home Department, the county council signified approval in principle of the application provided that access to the petrol station was from the minor road, the B.802 only.

On 30th December the hon. Member wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and a reply was sent on the 20th January, 1960, in the following terms: The position is that Dunbarton County Council have granted planning permission in principle for the petrol filling station in question on condition that there shall be no access direct to the proposed by-pass of the existing trunk road route A.80. Mrs. Doherty has of course a right of appeal to me"— that is, to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State— against the imposition of this condition by the County Council and one of my officials called on Mrs. Doherty on 30th January to explain the position to her. You will appreciate therefore that in view of the possibility of an appeal being lodged it would not be proper for me to comment on the merits of the case at this stage. On 17th February the hon. Member again wrote saying: I do hope you will give the necessary authority for Mrs. Doherty to proceed"— meaning to construct the petrol station with access to the trunk road. Again my right hon. Friend replied on 25th February, saying: As I explained to you in my earlier letter the case may be the subject of an appeal and it would not therefore be proper for me to comment further at this stage on the merits of the case. As the hon. Member knows, that is still the position. If Mrs. Doherty chooses to exercise her right of appeal it will be for my right hon. Friend to hold an inquiry under Section 14 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. At the moment my right hon. Friend has no locus to override a planning authority decision unless Mrs. Doherty appeals. That would be the right occasion to put forward the considerations which the hon. Member has mentioned.

The hon. Member also referred to the question of compensation. Compensation is fixed either by agreement or by the district valuer, and the person whose land is being taken has a right of appeal to the arbiter. If this lady was not satisfied with her compensation she had the right of appeal. There is no other step that my right hon. Friend can take. He cannot intervene. The question of compensation is not a matter for him. That is a matter for the arbiter, in the event of disagreement.

Mr. Bence

Unfortunately, it was Mrs. Doherty's husband who got the compensation. He has cleared off, and she does not know how much he got or how he got it.

Mr. Macpherson

So she does not know what to appeal against. That is a difficult position, but it does not alter the case.

I do not say this with any acrimony, but when the hon. Member raises a case I strongly advise him to put it forward on its own merits rather than to bring in a different case, decided by a different planning authority, in connection with a different road, in totally different circumstances. The case to which he referred was not related to a public house but to an hotel.

Mr. Bence

What is that but a public house?

Mr. Macpherson

One can make a distinction. At any rate, I understand that this hotel not only has bedrooms, but a ballroom, which is not normal in a public house.

Mr. Bence

It is still a drinking den.

Mr. Macpherson

This hotel is in Great Western Road. Planning permission was given in 1955. A significant feature of the case was that approval was given only after the site had been changed and on condition that while entry to the hotel was from the dual carriageway the exit for vehicles from it was to a side road behind it, leading to Kilbowie Road.

Miss Margaret Herbison (Lanarkshire, North)

That is only one of the cases raised by my hon. Friend. What about the case to Crow Wood in Muirhead, which my hon. Friend also mentioned?

Mr. Macpherson

I shall come to the question of this particular road in a minute. I think I ought not to comment on this case at all, but—

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

Mr. Macpherson

—I can at least say something of the policy in regard to the planning permission for petrol stations on trunk roads. I think the hon. Gentleman would like me to do that.

Very careful consideration indeed has been given both by the present Government and by the Labour Government before them to that question. The General Development (Scotland) Order, 1950, made under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, enabled the Minister of Transport, who was then responsible, to give directions in the case of development which would affect a trunk road, restricting the grant of permission by the planning authority. Since 1956, when the Secretary of State became the highway authority, the Secretary of State has not issued directions; but, where he considered it necessary, he has called in applications for decision by himself under Section 13 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. The object of both procedures is to ensure uniformity in policy as regards the national road system.

In 1958, the Secretary of State and the Minister of Transport each issued a circular to explain policy in regard to petrol stations on trunk roads with particular reference to applications for petrol stations in the open countryside. The circulars made clear that the purpose of these roads is, as main roads, to carry traffic speedily and safely between important centres.

We would all agree that it would be folly to spend millions of pounds on new bypasses, designed to avoid built-up areas and to reduce the number of access roads to the main traffic route, only to clutter up the new road with a profusion of petrol stations. The circular does not say that there should be no new petrol stations on such roads, but it does make it plain that the main criteria to be applied in considering individual applications are road safety and public need. Accordingly, the Secretary of State has had to refuse many applications, including fourteen apart from this particular case, on the Glasgow-Denny Road. Of course, that case has not come to him yet. In some cases, the applicant wanted a site on the new road because his garage, where he had been established for years, was being bypassed by it. In others, the new road literally passed right over an existing petrol station, but, in all cases, the main considerations must remain road safety and public need.

The circular says this: It would be contrary to good planning to permit development on the open stretches of these roads which would impair their usefulness for their intended purpose, or would in particular impair the value of any improvements. All petrol filling stations, even on well placed and adequate-sized sites, which would have access to fast open stretches of the road are liable to interfere with the smooth flow of traffic. Accordingly, they should not be allowed unless there is a very good reason, for example, a genuine lack of facilities to ment essential needs or the possibility of replacing an obsolete and dangerously sited station. Bypasses and new construction providing vast stretches should, if less than twelve miles long in all, normally be kept free of stations. That is the general policy which has been announced and it is in accordance with that policy that the Secretary of State will normally call in applications for planning permission where it is a question of access to a trunk road.

I am conscious of the considerations which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, and of course due note will be taken of everything he has said. But it would be quite wrong for me to comment—as I said before and as the Secretary of State has twice repeated— unless and until the matter comes before the Secretary of State in the form of an appeal and my right hon. Friend has to decide upon it. Then it will be open to the hon. Gentleman to criticise the decision if he is dissatisfied with it, or to applaud it if he is satisfied. But in the meantime comment on my part either way would not be in order. I hope that this debate will serve to make the present policy regarding petrol stations on trunk roads better known and more widely accepted.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at six minutes past Ten o'clock.