HC Deb 10 February 1961 vol 634 cc893-902

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Colonel J. H. Harrison.]

4.2 p.m.

Mr. Julian Snow (Lichfield and Tamworth)

I desire to raise the question of the proposed bypass for the Borough of Tamworth in the Lichfield and Tamworth constituency. In the ordinary course of events I would apologise for raising this issue, because it seems largely to be a question of the adequacy or inadequacy of local consultation. In mentioning the Borough of Tamworth, I feel that I am in duty bound to point out that, from everybody's point of view, it is a very ancient borough, indeed. Readers of Coningsby will recall the significance of the Tamworth Manifesto, and I need not apologise to Conservatives for the significance in history of Sir Robert Peel, of whom I am one of the Parliamentary successors.

This bypass would, on the face of it, appear not to be a matter for Parliamentary consideration. It is largely a technical matter. The reason that I have felt it important to raise it in this House is that there have been signs that unless it is brought to the immediate attention of the Minister of Transport a serious mistake may be made. There is another reason. I desire to express, in some form, my dissatisfaction with the way in which the Ministry of Transport has handled this case. I do not want to make heavy weather about this, but I refer the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to his letter to me of 18th November which, I think, was badly drafted, largely irrelevant and, to some extent, caused offence in certain quarters in Tamworth. The letter, apparently, picked up a chance remark by the Town Clerk that, as two adjacent towns, which also happen to be in my constituency, had had bypasses, the Borough of Tamworth also apparently thought that they ought to receive consideration. This was, if not an irrelevancy, at least a very minor matter compared with the major matter of seeing that in due course a proper bypass was authorised which would not interfere with the amenities of the town or the safety of the public, especially the children.

In the letter it was stated: The Tamworth Borough Council seem to be perturbed because Stamford and Lichfield are likely to get bypasses before one is provided for Tamworth. That is quite untrue and not worthy of the seriousness with which the Parliamentary Secretary always considers these problems. However, I do not want to labour that point too much.

The Ministry has been advised on a road, which I will call the present proposed bypass. In a letter on 31st August, last year, the Minister admitted that this road was "suspect". This is not an easy problem, and I am concerned to find out whether adequate consultation has taken place, especially with the local education authority.

The proposed bypass will make use of entry into the town by the road A.543, locally and commonly known as the Ashby road. This bypass, which will carry extremely heavy traffic from Nottingham and outlying areas, will start bypassing right outside a new boys' secondary school and will then intersect with other local roads at a spot locally known as the Fountain, the fountain itself being immediately outside a grammar school. It then proceeds to pass a girls' school and is very near to two more schools, so that five schools are directly or indirectly affected by road safety and noise considerations.

Two alternative suggestions have been made locally. I am not particularly enthusiastic about either. I will call one the eastern line proposal and the other the western line proposal. I believe that the eastern proposal is the subject of a further survey by the authorities to ascertain from trial borings whether it will be possible to take the road by a more circuitous route, but a route which would avoid the disadvantages of the proposed bypass. There is another suggestion to which I am rather more closely attached, that is to say, the western line bypass. Incidentally, although I am sure that he had something like it before, I have given the hon. Gentleman a map outlining these proposals. The western line road will go through a relatively undeveloped area which I will describe as the Browns Lane, Gillway and Coton Lane route.

I would have thought that the sensible thing would have been to re-examine the proposed building developments in that area to see whether the new bypass should not go on the northern part of the area to which I have referred and then rejoin on the Lichfield road the proposed bypass now put forward by the authorities.

There is another important factor to be considered. The Minister will be aware that proceedings are under way for the taking over by the Borough of Tamworth of the area known as Staffordshire Moor for industrial purposes. Indeed, the proposed bypass touches the eastern extremity of Staffordshire Moor.

If the Browns Lane area was taken in as part of a Western line bypass, it would be desirable to reconsider the point at which the bypass should cross Staffordshire Moor. Staffordshire Moor is due for industrial development, and there is this over-riding anxiety on the part of the local authority that it is a receiving overspill area. It is duty bound under an agreement with the Staffordshire County Council, Birmingham, and the borough itself to create both housing and industry for the reception of overspill from Birmingham. It is expected that before many years have passed the population of Tamworth will be about 20,000. I therefore think that there ought to be a completely new survey as to how this road should proceed, and what line it should take.

I desire to stress another factor. The representations that I have received have not come only from the local authority. Indeed, some months ago I received a considered memorandum on this subject from a solicitor in Tamworth. He wrote to me about the anxiety shared by many responsible persons about the proposal now under consideration by the Ministry, namely, the line which will take it, broadly speaking, through the main academic centre of the town.

He said in his letter: I write to you as a private individual, as a resident in Tamworth, a motorist, and a father of children who, I hope, will in due course be pupils of the Grammar School. I am as well a Governor of the School, and it will be patent to you that the Board of Governors are very concerned. He then lists the schools which I have described to the Minister which will be affected.

There are serious disadvantages in a high noise level in the vicinity of schools.

Pupils simply could not work. Quite apart from the safety factor, which at present is bad enough in Tamworth, the position will be made immeasurably worse if the proposed line of the bypass is finally adopted.

It is very easy for me to talk about these things. It is very much more difficult to find the right alternative. Was the Road Advisory Committee of the Staffordshire County Council at any time invited to carry out an on-the-spot survey? This is important, because I have heard that it might have been better had that taken place. Perhaps I am misinformed, but I would like to know.

I cannot over-emphasise that there are the following factors to consider. First, the proposed housing and road development at the northern end in what I will call the Browns Lane area. Secondly, whether the local education authority ever expressed a view agreeing to the proposed route. If it was not consulted, I suggest that that was a serious omission. Thirdly, the proposed industrialisation of Staffordshire Moor, a proposal which I think has tended to become a prominent matter of local economic interest divorced from this question of the bypass.

Some people say that we have to take a broad view and realise that something has to be done about the huge volume of traffic from the East Midlands through Tamworth. This is a problem with which the small towns in my constituency, Rugely, Lichfield and Tamworth are all concerned. These are towns on the radial roads from Birmingham and Wolverhampton out towards the East Midlands. They tend to be old historical towns where over the years the main street has become the main artery for traffic between the East and West Midlands. Therefore, in my judgment, it is an anachronism even to consider taking traffic on part of those old radial roads. We must find money for an alternative.

Considering those factors, I ask the Minister at any rate to cause new inquiries to be made, bearing in mind that the greatest importance is attached by the local authority in this case to a quick decision so that other plans regarding the Ministry can be finalised.

4.15 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay)

I must begin by thanking the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) for having been kind enough to give me notice of some of the points he wished to raise. I am sorry—and I tell him this quite openly—if the letter that I wrote to him on 18th November has given any offence in his constituency. It was certainly not written with any intention of being discourteous. If I had to write it again, in the light of what he has said, I think I might change the wording, but I was trying briefly to paraphrase what I understood to be the main trouble involved here.

I can probably best help the hon. Member by giving some of the background of the Tamworth bypass proposals and then trying to answer the two questions with which I imagine his constituents are most concerned—first, where will the bypass come, and, secondly, when will it be built? The Birmingham-Nottingham trunk road, A.453, traverses Tamworth and is for part of its length the main street of Tamworth. The approach to the town is over a humpbacked bridge and a narrow river bridge. The town streets are narrow and tortuous and the main junction is signal-controlled. Delays are frequent, congestion is acute, and it is obvious to anybody, including the Ministry, that the bypass must be built.

The first question is: where should it be built? As the hon. Member has said, there are a number of possibilities. The Staffordshire county development plan, which was approved in 1958, included the route which is now referred to as the bypass route, in a very diagrammatic form. This road runs fairly close to the western boundary of the town. It starts on the A.4091 and then, swinging away to the west, it traverses successively at right-angles the trunk road, A.453, a classified road, A.51, and the railway line. It ends at the junction of the A.453 with another classified road, A.513, to the north of the town. It would therefore take traffic not only for the trunk road A.453, but also three other roads, A.51, A.513, and the Class I road, A.4091—which, according to our information, carries a slightly larger volume of traffic than does the trunk road.

It therefore has the advantage that it serves a number of roads, but it has some consequential disadvantages. First, as the hon. Member said, it is clear that it would sever the existing town from the new residential and industrial areas being developed and planned to the west and, in particular, the Staffordshire Moor area, to which the hon. Member referred. I understand that a Private Bill is being promoted in the present Session to enable the acquisition of the Staffordshire Moor area to be made.

Mr. Snow

That has been withdrawn, but other methods are being considered.

Mr. Hay

I was not informed that the Bill had been withdrawn, but in any event it would not have been appropriate to discuss that matter in any detail now, nor would I have the time to do so. The second disadvantage is that in the vicinity of the grammar school what is called the campus area is being cleared, for all senior education, and it is at this point that the bypass line would terminate, in a five-armed junction. I agree, as do the officials of the Ministry—and, I am sure, the county council—that this would be undesirable. In any event, whatever happens this will have to be looked at again.

There has also been mention of another route. I am told that in 1957 the borough council asked for another line to be considered, even further west. This is probably the one that the hon. Member was talking about, which he said he preferred.

Mr. Snow

I said I preferred part of it.

Mr. Hay

Part of it. This is the line which sweeps well away to the west. We have considerable doubts about it There are several defects, which I will mention briefly. To begin with, it would have a total length of about 7,000 yards, as compared with the 2,750' yards of the present line. Next it. would make use of existing roads whch already have quite considerable frontage development. Thirdly, it would not. connect with the A.4091 which, as I said, is the road that carries more traffic than the trunk road. It has the advantage that it would be beyond the residential and industrial development, but this may be irrelevant because I am told that the local borough council has now dropped the proposal for this far-flung west bypass.

To try to meet the objections to the present line, that is to say the inner West line, we and the county council—

Mr. Snow

I should like to emphasise that what I said was that I thought advantage might be taken of part of that outlying western line, not the whole of it, which I agreed was far too long.

Mr. Hay

I think that we are both agreed that this is a matter difficult to debate. One needs to have all the plans spread out and to wield pencils so that one can point out what one means. However, I think that if the hon. Gentleman studies in HANSARD what I have said he will understand our point of view.

To try to meet the objections to the present inner west line, we and the county council are now considering another line, part of which in the past has also been canvassed. This will run from the junction between the A.453 and the A.4091 in the south-eastwards to the railway. It would then cross the railway line and run northwards, parallel with and to the east of the railway. It would join the A.453 trunk road north of Tarn worth again, about half a mile east of the point where that road crosses the railway.

I must say with all the sincerity that I can command—and I hope that if my remarks in the House are to be reported in the local Press at Tamworth that this qualification will also be highlighted—that what I have just said is only a reference to a possible line that is being looked at tentatively at the moment. No one in Tamworth owning property or land along or in the vicinity of the line which I have mentioned should imagine that we have come to any firm or final decision about it. There would be a long statutory process to be gone through even if we decided that it was a better one than the existing line. I hope, therefore, that neither the hon. Gentleman nor I will be bombarded with correspondence from anxious constituents because I have mentioned that there is this possible line. In any event, no firm opinion could be given on the line until a great deal more survey work has been done.

The hon. Gentleman asked about a survey. We think that this should be put in hand as soon as staff and resources are available. The first step would be to take trial bore holes for a survey on this line. We think that a survey ought also to be conducted on the present line, the one I mentioned and which is immediately to the west of Tamworth. This has not yet been done. I think that that answers the point.

So far as my information goes there has been the fullest consultation on the normal basis with all the local authorities involved in this matter, including the county council which is, of course, not only my right hon. Friend's agent and a highway authority for the county but also, as far as I understand, the education authority. Presumably, therefore, in connection with the campus area, the county council would be equally seized of the highway aspects and of the educational aspects with the termination of the present bypass line at that point. We certainly know of no case for complaint on the ground of lack of consultations, but if there is any complaint I will certainly have it investigated if the details are sent to me through the hon. Gentleman.

I hope it is clear that we recognise that there is a need for a bypass at Tamworth, but the fact is that up to the present no line has been finally settled. The one line which has gone farthest in the process of being fixed is the inner west line, but that is only very sketchily drawn in, as it were, on the development plan. The matter has not gone beyond that. Much more investigation will be needed before we finally fix the line.

That brings me to the second question—when could we expect to build a bypass at Tamworth. I think that the House knows that in the allocation of funds for trunk road improvement we give priority to those trunk roads where the improvement will give the highest economic return and which will bring the greatest benefit to national traffic. After all, trunk roads are national roads as opposed to classified roads which in the main are serving local districts. Tamworth does not lie on one of these roads. To use the A.453 going through Tamworth as a main road from the Black Country to Derby and Nottingham and to reconstruct it accordingly would, I am told, present some physical difficulties in the actual process of construction. Moreover, it is not so well placed or so convenient for that traffic as the A.38 via Lichfield and Burton-on-Trent.

This road has been selected for comprehensive improvement throughout. For example, the Lichfield bypass, or one of them, has been planned for early inclusion in our programme. Nevertheless, we do not deny that there is need for the Tamworth bypass, I must make that absolutely clear. But in all the circumstances, much as I should like to announce a date when we could start, I cannot forecast when it will be possible to include it in the programme. The first step is to settle the route, and what I have said and the references I have made to no less than four different lines will show that we are a long way from settling the route yet. But we will certainly settle it as soon as we can. We shall persevere with the task of carrying out the survey and going through the statutory process of starting the work to the best of our ability.

Mr. Snow

The hon. Gentleman has undertaken to press on with the survey of what I have described as the eastern line route. Would he undertake to ask his advisers also to examine my suggestion about using part of the outer western line route? I think that a matter Which ought to be looked into in a little more detail.

Mr. Hay

I have told the hon Gentleman that so far as resources are available we will press on with the survey of the eastern road and also of the inner western road, that is to say, the present line we were talking about. Regarding the line further west, I will certainly ask my advisers to consider that suggestion, and if there is anything useful which we can adduce from it we shall give the credit where it is due.

Mr. Snow

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Four o'clock.