HC Deb 16 June 1964 vol 696 cc1244-54

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

10.10 p.m.

Mr. Airey Neave (Abingdon)

Tonight I wish to discuss the section of the road known as the A.34 which passes through my constituency from East Ilsley to the Southern Bypass near Oxford. I know that my hon. Friend has many Adjournment Motions of this kind to answer, but I am sure he will agree that this is a serious one, to the extent that it concerns the village of East Ilsley and the whole length of the A.34 to which I have referred.

The section that I am discussing starts just south of East Ilsley and continues through the dreadfully congested streets of Abingdon to the northern beginning of the Oxford southern bypass. Along it an increasing volume of traffic, particularly heavy commercial vehicles, passes to and from the North and Southampton. The total length of the A.34 to Manchester is 198½ miles, and although the section to which I have referred is a small one it suffers considerably from this traffic.

It is extremely dangerous in many places. It is a fast road over the Downs, in the Berkshire section, and the times of peak traffic to and from the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell make it exceptionally so, where it runs to Abingdon and Oxford. The proposed bypassing of Abingdon is one of the subjects that I shall mention tonight, but since the case of East Ilsley is much more immediate and serious I will begin with that village.

A local newspaper—the Oxford Mail —has described the situation in the village as "a scandal". I quite agree. Indeed, the damage caused by vehicles entering the village by what is known as Star Hill, from the south of the village, gives the main street the appearance of having undergone shellfire. No one can blame the anger of the villagers; many of their houses are being swiftly demolished, and those villagers who remain are extremely anxious for the safety of their families. The insurance companies are having their doubts about the risk to property in the village. I hope that my hon. Friend realises the state of real exasperation at the delay in making decisions about this proposed bypass. That is what gives rise to this part of the Adjournment Motion.

On 9th May, at 6.40 p.m., a ten-ton lorry wrecked the house of a Mr. Serralls, who, with his five children, lived in a house called "Wheatsheaf"—I believe that at one time it was an inn—part of the way down Star Hill. Luckily the family were in the garden at the time and escaped, but they were rendered completely homeless. I saw the house next day. The whole front had been completely destroyed. The danger of this road is that it descends sharply at that point, on a right-hand bend, into the narrow village street.

Two days before this a goods tanker, also travelling north in the same direction as the vehicle that destroyed Mr. Serralls' house, finally wrecked the "Lamb" public house, now disused. The other half had been totally destroyed six months before. As a result of my visit on 9th May, I had a look at the police reports which were provided for me. They showed that since 22nd October, 1962, no fewer than 17 accidents had occurred in the village involving personal injury or death. A great many others that had occurred, but which were not reported because personal injuries were not involved did considerable damage to property. Indeed, some villagers cannot sleep at night on account of the threat to their lives and properties

If the by pass, as my hon. Friend will agree, is the solution, what can be done in the meantime. Most of the vehicles referred to in these accidents were going much too fast. The entrance to the village requires warning notices of a quite exceptional kind, for the villagers clearly live in terror of a recurrence of these accidents. One of them is already building home-made defences to protect his children on the sharp slope in question in the village street to which I am referring.

On 13th May, in answer to no fewer than eight Written Questions which I put to my hon. Friend about the A.34 at East Ilsley, he stated, among other things, that the 30-mile an hour limit was well observed. If my hon. Friend will forgive me for saying so, I think that he was badly advised to make that answer. The speed of vehicles is why the accidents are occurring at East Ilsley. The place, particularly the steep slope I mentioned from Star Hill down into the village, is so dangerous that he should consider seriously ordering a special speed limit of 20 miles an hour on account of this rapid descent.

I mention this because the section of the A.34 to which I am referring is a fairly fast road from East Ilsley towards Abingdon, and if anyone living in the street loses his life as a result of what is going on now it will be certainly largely due to vehicles coming down the hill too fast. It is an exceptional danger and requires exceptional measures, including, perhaps, special signs reading, for traffic descending the hill, "Very dangerous descent", or for traffic going the other way, "Very dangerous entrance to this village". I am sure that the Berkshire county police would co-operate to see that such a speed limit was observed.

Since the accident on 9th May, the county council has installed traffic lights on a one-way system. This has done some good, but it has not prevented serious accidents. I wonder whether the Minister would assure me that the lights will stay there until the bypass is completed? Will he also ask the divisional road engineer, in co-operation with the Berkshire County Council, to ensure that the lights are three-phased as the present two-phased lights were rather hurriedly placed there after the accident of 9th May?

The history of the bypass project for East Ilsley is really rather deplorable. It dates from well before the war, and the route has often been amended. Various orders have been made since the time when I first raised the matter with my hon. Friend's Department. In 1959 I was told that the completion of this bypass was possible in 18 months. In November, 1962, in answer to a Written Question, the Minister told me that work might start in the autumn of 1963. This statement has particularly angered the villages of East Ilsley, because no such thing has happened.

In August, 1963, the Minister issued the necessary Side Road Orders in connection with the route of this bypass and correspondence ensued with the county council. Some objections from landowners and comments from the East Ilsley Parish Council were made in January of this year have received no reply from anybody. I went to East Ilsley on Sunday last and was informed then that such objectors as there are had had no contact whatever with the Ministry about this matter since the publication of the Order in August, 1963. That seems to me a most unsatisfactory position. The Ministry has known for years that East Ilsley was an urgent matter. Will my hon. Friend give some reasons for the delay and say when the work will commence as some of these objections may not in effect be very substantial? They no doubt will be taken into consideration, but I want to know why since 1963 no one has pursued with any energy the question of land acquisition.

In order to give my hon. Friend the maximum time to reply, I now go to the rest of A.34 and the southern bypass. There have been discussions about a new route for this road east of Abingdon. They have gone on for a considerable time. Now they have been complicated by the re-appearance in the discussion of an alternative route to the west—a western bypass of Abingdon. The county council. Abingdon Council, myself and others were under the impression that a western bypass was not still the subject of discussion. We had indicated for several years past our preference for the eastern route. Abingdon Council, the county council and other local councils affected on the section of A.34 referred to from Chilton to the southern bypass, are in favour of the eastern diversion of A.34 and would very much prefer it.

What they want from my right hon. Friend the Minister is a decision. It is not understood what the factors are which caused the Ministry once again to survey a western bypass. We were led to believe that the western bypass was no longer under discussion. Can we be told when a decision will be made about which side of Abingdon the road is to go? There is no question that this is causing maximum inconvenience to local authorities and others. My hon. Friend will remember a question I asked on this point. Could not a decision be announced before the draft Order as to whether the road is to go east or west of Abingdon? Obviously the details of the actual line of the route will have to be the subject of the draft Order, but can my hon. Friend say this summer or as soon as possible which side of Abingdon he intends the road to go?

The inconvenience caused is obvious. What is less obvious is the statement in reply to a Written Question I put the other day that the construction of the 2,000 megawatt power station at Didcot will not affect the priority of this diversion of A.34. I should like to know more about what effect my hon. Friend thinks it will have on the existing roads in the neighbourhood. I hope that my hon. Friend will soon relieve East Ilsley from its nightmare and give us a firm statement tonight about the beginning of this bypass which has been the subject of so much discussion and so many assurances since long before the last election. Will he insist on his Department giving a decision on the Abingdon diversion of A.34?

10.14 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)

I am glad to be having this debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave). I hope it may help to iron out any difficulties or misunderstandings which may have arisen in the past to which my hon. Friend referred in his speech. My hon. Friend has been very active in his championship of the need to improve A.34. Quite apart from all he has done in the past to represent very forcibly and persuasively—and also reasonably—his constituents' interests, he has recently asked no fewer than eight Parliamentary Questions and has also written at length urging the need for speedy action.

I do not complain in the least of this spate of activity. I understand quite well how he and his constituents feel, but I am only sorry that he is not unique. If he were it would be quite easy to help him, but unfortunately there are many other roads just as hard pressed as the one in which he is interested. For example, only last night I was answering a somewhat similar Adjournment debate about another road, the A. 12 in another part of the country. It is because there is this competition for treatment that improvements on my hon. Friend's road have still to come.

I know that, as he said, a special sense of urgency has been added to his campaign for better conditions on the A.34 by the recent accidents which have occurred at East Ilsley. My right hon. Friend and I were extremely sorry to read of these accidents, and we can well understand the sense of fear and frustration which has gripped the village and to which my hon. Friend has referred so graphically. It would perhaps not be appropriate for me to venture an opinion now as to the extent to which bad driving may or may not have contributed to these accidents, but my right hon. Friend fully appreciates the importance of getting the bypass, to which my hon. Friend referred, built as quickly as he possibly can.

As for the timing of the work on the bypass, to which my hon. Friend referred at some length, I am sure that he realises that one of the causes of delay in road improvement is the need to follow the statutory procedures which Parliament has laid down for dealing with this subject. These procedures can be galling to those who are anxious to improve matters quickly, but we must remember the interest of householders and, indeed, the interest of the whole local community, which can easily be affected by a new route. There is here an inevitable clash of interest, and to see that justice is done to those who want improvements and to those who own houses or property naturally takes time.

In this instance my hon. Friend will be glad to know that my right hon. Friend has decided to overrule objections to the making of the Side Roads Order under Section 9 of the Highways Act, 1959. A letter informing objectors of this decision should have been received by them today, and the Order will be effective on 23rd June. I hope that this is something which my hon. Friend and his constituents will appreciate.

So as to save time, instructions to the district valuer to open negotiations for the necessary land have already been issued, and provided that we do not have to resort to compulsory purchase order procedures, this means that we should be able to start work on the bypass in the autumn of this year. Of course, I recognise that this is a good deal later than we had originally hoped and, indeed, later than we had led my hon. Friend and his constituents to believe. But our original design for the bypass met, as he knows better than anybody, considerable objection. As I said, this is something which often happens. In trying to meet these objections and suggested improvements in details, delays inevitably occurred. The new design is, I think, better than the old design, and if the compulsory purchase procedures to which I have referred do not have to be used—and in the circumstances I very much hope that they will not have to be used—the scheme should get off to a good start this autumn.

The scheme will cost nearly £600,000, so that it is of considerable size, but I am sure that this expenditure is well worth while. I think that with reasonable progress the work should be finished by the summer of 1966, and I hope that, after all the previous disappointments, this news will encourage my hon. Friend's constituents, and that with a definite improvement to look forward to they will be able to put up for a bit longer without the bypass which they have so rightly sought for such a long time.

We have, however, to deal with the interim period between now and the building of the bypass, and several suggestions have been made as to ways of improving the safety of the road through East Ilsley until the bypass is completed. My hon. Friend will be glad to know that the divisional road engineer has been in close touch with the county authorities to see what can be done to improve safety.

As my hon. Friend knows—indeed he referred to this—temporary traffic signals were installed as an emergency control measure while the road was blocked with rubble. It has been suggested that these signals might remain until the bypass is built, but this form of control is really appropriate only where the road is obstructed and cannot carry traffic in both directions at the same time. This situation no longer applies at East Ilsley now that the rubble has been removed, and therefore it does not seem to me that there is any point in maintaining signals of this nature.

Another suggestion that my hon. Friend made was that a special speed limit should be imposed, but again I am afraid that this would not achieve very much. First, many of the accidents occur at low speed and are due to the narrowness of the road, so even if cars were going at only 20 miles per hour this might well be too fast for the nature of the road. Secondly, in these instances where speed is high there is no reason to suppose that a limit will reduce the speed. The speed may be higher from sheer negligence, or perhaps due to defective equipment of some sort. Anyway, this is not a suggestion put to my right hon. Friend by the county council, nor is it supported by the police.

At the moment, as my hon. Friend knows, there is already a 30-mile-an-hour speed limit through the village, and I am informed—I realise that my information is different from my hon. Friend's—that this is reasonably well observed, but enforcement of the speed limit is, as my hon. Friend is well aware, not a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport.

Mr. Neave

May I go back to the traffic light point? Does my hon. Friend realise that there is a one-way system through the village into the main street, which makes a traffic-light system there effective for curtailing speed?

Mr. Galbraith

Yes. It may well be that my hon. Friend and I are talking at cross-purposes. I have a map here. I do not know the area as well as my hon. Friend does. I realise that there is a one-way system. I thought that what my hon. Friend was trying to suggest was that towards the point where the accident occurred there should be one-way working. I do not think that the road is narrow enough to justify that now that the rubble has been removed. However, I will look into the point.

Mr. Neave

If my hon. Friend would do that, it would help.

Mr. Galbraith

Certainly. From what I have said, I do not want my hon. Friend to think that our approach is entirely negative and that we intend doing nothing over the next few months. We are in fact negotiating with the owner concerned to obtain an easement, which would enable a road widening scheme at the "Lamb" public house to take place. This would extend the width of the road at this rather dangerous point to 22 ft. and would help very considerably. I know that compared with the many suggestions which have been made, this may not appear to be very much, but the real solution for East Ilsley lies, as my hon. Friend knows—I agree with him—in the bypass and, in the meantime, I think that this widening will do as much as is possible to improve conditions in the village itself.

I should like now to turn for a minute or two to the wider question of improvements to A.34 as a whole south of the Oxford Southern Bypass. One thing I want to make quite clear is that I accept completely what my hon. Friend said, that improvement to this road is necessary. The only difficulty is that we must be absolutely sure before initiating the necessary long-drawn-out and complicated statutory procedures under the Highways Act, 1959, that we have chosen the best possible line for the road. The delays at East Ilsley are a warning of what can happen, and indeed of nothing more than road building is it true to say, "More hurry, less speed".

As I think my hon. Friend knows, we have two alternative proposals in mind, one to the east of Abingdon and the other to the west. Studies already completed have shown that the balance of advantage when the two are compared is much narrower than we had originally thought.

In these circumstances, we have learned from experience that the quickest way in the long run to resolve the problem is to make the most careful and detailed examination beforehand so that the scheme as advertised is the one which has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of my right hon. Friend to be the best overall solution. And here there are inevitably many factors involved—of finance, amenity, effect on property, as well as traffic considerations and the engineering problems of actually building the road. All this apparently delaying preparatory work will, however, pay dividends in the future.

I appreciate the anxiety of those concerned who want to have a line fixed quickly and who see no sign of activity likely to lead to a decision. I can assure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend is well aware of this natural feeling and, without prejudicing a wise decision which inevitably takes time, he is pressing on as quickly as possible, and will announce a line whenever he can.

Another point raised by my hon. Friend is the priority this improvement should receive once the line has been decided. This is another hurdle that often causes delay. Here the principle that guides my right hon. Friend is that, if the resources made available to him for major road improvement are to be used to the best national advantage, he must ensure that the cases which are most pressing nationally are dealt with first. Naturally, what is right nationally often causes severe disappointment locally, but I am sure we are right to insist on a national system of priorities.

My hon. Friend urged the case for speeding improvement of A.34 on the ground of the extra traffic from the proposed new power station at Didcot. I do not think that the extra traffic from the power station will justify, by itself, an increase in the priority which improvement of this part of A.34 would command in its own right because additional traffic will be only marginal. My hon. Friend asked if I would give an estimate of the amount of traffic. We estimate that it would be rather less than one year's normal growth on a road of this kind.

Another point which might be taken into account is the effect of the South-East Development Plan on this important road between the North and South. It is too early at this stage to know what effect that will have on the future of this road.

I know that a good deal of what I have said sounds rather tenuous and vague, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the tremendous increase in the road programme over the past few years should encourage my hon. Friend and his constituents, for although we can promise him no special favours, we are determined to press ahead as vigorously as the economy will allow. As our record shows, that is fairly fast going.

Over the last five years the Government have spent on new construction work about £382 million, and in the next five years we will be spending another £800 million. As regards improvements on A.34, to show my hon. Friend that this road is not being neglected, in the past four years about £40,000 has been spent on large-scale minor improvements in Abingdon.

Work on reconstructing, widening and realigning the Vineyard, Abingdon, has just started, at a cost of about £40,000. Bus bays between East Ilsley and Abingdon have been built at a cost of about £3,000. Rowstock crossroads, on A.34, will be improved this autumn at a cost of about £30,000 and another improvement on A.34 in this year's programme is at Boars Hill. The cost there is £25,000, but the scheme has been delayed because of compulsory purchase order action. All this mounts up and I can assure my hon. Friend that both in the problem at East Ilsley and in the wider issue of the A.34 south of Oxford my right hon. Friend will continue to do everything he can, within the limits set by finance, statutory procedures for the protection of individual interests, and the need for detailed and patient planning, to effect major improvements on the whole of the A.34 as quickly as their proper priorities justify; and I am sure my hon. Friend would not seek more than that.

Mr. Neave

Will my hon. Friend have a further discussion about the traffic lights at East Ilsley?

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy-Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.