ROADS (WASHINGTON NEW TOWN) (Hansard, 1 July 1974)

§ Mr. Giles Radice (Chester-le-Street)

I am raising the question of road closures and alternative routes in Washington New Town not only because they are important to my constituency but because they raise matters of wider interest. Although Village Lane has been closed, the planning decision on which I wish to concentrate concerns Spout Lane which, until it was closed, was the main route joining the north and south of Washington New Town.

I concede that the road is narrow and, perhaps, unsuitable to be the main north-south link of a growing new town. However, it is important because it connects the health centre, the doctor's surgery and shops in north Washington with the public library, the main post office and churches in south Washington. In addition, it provided a means of speedy access for parents to Washington Comprehensive School and was vital to the social life of the community, in that it provided speedy access to many working men's clubs in the area.

175 Washington Development Corporation first gave notice of its intention to close Spout Lane when it published its master plan in 1967. I have no complaint against the way in which the development corporation carried out its obligations to inform the public of what it intended to do. Indeed, in the 1968 and 1973 publications of its review—which goes to every house in Washington—and in several public meetings it went beyond its legal obligations. The county council and the Washington Urban District Council both agreed to the closure and at no stage was there any complaint from the public. I emphasise that, because it will be common ground between the Minister and myself and it is relevant to the case which I wish to develop.

As there was no protest, the Minister had no choice but to make an order closing Spout Lane, which he did on 4th May 1972. The order was not enforced immediately because of the absence of alternative routes, and only on 22nd November 1973 was it closed. Just before that date, following a public meeting, public protest began to mount. An action group was set up, a petition was organised which immediately gathered about 4,000 signatures and local councillors and the Member of Parliament were called in.

On 19th November, I wrote to the Minister's predecessor to urge that the closure of Spout Lane be halted until north-south communications were developed. On 18th December, the Minister's predecessor replied that he had no powers to delay the closure. He suggested that I should contact the Development Corporation about the provision of alternative routes. On 4th December 1973 the corporation approached me to assist it in making representations to the Minister about approving funds for an early start to the Northern Expressway. I wrote to the Minister on 5th December about that alternative route.

On 25th January the Minister replied to my letter of 5th December about alternative routes. He was pessimistic about the chances of the northern part of the Northern Expressway starting in the scheduled year, 1974–75. Meanwhile, after the closure in Washington protests continued at a high level. People began to 176 find that they were seriously inconvenienced by the closure, and 10,000 signatures were collected. Buses had to be re-routed and this caused considerable hardship. Car traffic had to travel an extra mile or two. Doctors, churchmen, shopkeepers, old-age pensioners, parents and housewives were up in arms. People wrote letters to the Press, to their councillors and to their Member of Parliament. There were further public meetings which, incidentally, were the best attended public meetings that I have spoken to in my constituency. Nearly 1,000 people attended.

Significantly, Washington council in the last few months of its existence changed its mind and asked me to arrange a deputation to see the Minister. Spout Lane became an election issue in the 1974 election. Immediately following the election I asked the new Minister to receive a deputation, but he declined because he stated that he had no further jurisdiction in the matter as the road was closed.

Important issues are raised by the Spout Lane closure. The first matter is that of timing. Whatever the case for closing Spout Lane—and I concede that it was a narrow road and had its traffic dangers—the timing must be wrong. At present there are no adequate alternatives because there is no adequate north-south link. As a result there is a level of hardship and public inconvenience.

I wish to ask the Minister two specific questions, of which I have already given him notice. First, what would be the cost of converting Spout Lane into a bus-only link? Such a link would avoid the hazards and would prove of great use to residents. The Northern Bus Company favours such a link. Secondly, what is the cost of providing alternative routes and when are we likely to get them? It is important that we have these two figures so that we can make a comparison of cost and of the time which both projects might take.

I turn to the question of planning procedure. The striking thing about the Spout Lane closure is that people were aroused to protest only just before and after the closure was announced. Therefore, is there not a case for reviewing planning procedure? Is it not possible to have a trial period of closure so that people may see what is involved? People do not always understand maps and 177 plans—and that includes me. Should we not take this factor into account where possible? It would have been possible to put bollards across Spout Lane and say, "This is what we shall do", so that people could have understood what the closure would mean.

I am a great admirer of Washington New Town. I believe that it is one of the most exciting and imaginative projects in Great Britain. But I wonder whether the basis on which the new town was planned—namely, that everybody would have a motor car—will be as relevant in the future as it seemed to be at that time. I hope that the Minister will have a word with the corporation and advise its members to be a little more flexible in their approach. It may be that we in Washington should be building fewer urban motorways and providing faster bus services, perhaps subsidised by the corporation.

I am not saying that the master plan is wrong, but in the light of recent events such as the increase in oil prices and the drop in car sales—which may not be temporary phenomena—we may need modifications of the plan. I thank the Minister for his attention and await his reply with some eagerness.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Neil Carmichael)

My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Radice) is quite understandably concerned both about the local effects of those road closures in Washington New Town and about some wider related issues of planning and procedure. In the past few months, I have become aware of his great interest and assiduous concern for his constituents on this topic.

In responding to the debate, I want, first of all, to put this question of road closures into some sort of perspective.

What we are concerned with is in fact part of the development of Washington New Town; and that means the whole task of creating in that part of the North-East a new economic growth point with a new standard of urban life. It means a lot of change by way of redevelopment of existing built-up areas, fresh development where there was none before, and reclamation of industrial dereliction.

178 No one, I hope, will deny that changes of this kind in that area must be most desirable, or that the new town development corporation, with the collaboration of the local authorities, is generally making a good job of it. But of course, these changes cannot be brought about without a measure of disturbance. In such cases, we simply have to prefer the greater to the lesser good while ensuring, as far as possible, by good planning and careful execution that any disturbance is kept to the lowest level which can reasonably be achieved.

In developing Washington to take an eventual inflow of 50,000 to 60,000 new inhabitants, the development corporation and the local authorities will have achieved in many ways a better environment for the 20,000 or so who live there already—better general communications, better shopping, better facilities of every kind. But it will be different from what they were used to.

One feature of the master plan for Washington New Town, which was endorsed in 1967, is the creation of a new pattern of roads to aid traffic circulation within the town and to speed up its links with outside. This is an important feature both for the convenience of those living in the town and as part of the development corporation's successful drive to attract there the employers needed to provide the jobs which are as important in a new town as the houses the corporation builds.

The new road pattern is based on a one-mile grid of dual carriageway roads with limited access. New north-south and east-west roads will open up the undeveloped parts of the designated area, join up the various parts of the town, and divert through traffic on to less congested and safer routes. There will then be high standards of pedestrian and vehicle segregation. About half this new road system is now open or under construction.

It follows from the introduction of these new roads that some of the existing roads in Washington had to be closed to through traffic. Inevitably, such closures can cause local difficulties which have to be weighed against offsetting local benefits as well as the benefits of the scheme as a whole.

My hon. Friend has mentioned the inconvenience to residents caused by the 179 recent closure of two of these roads, Spout Lane and Village Lane. Certainly these were both long-accepted and well-used roads. Spout Lane, in particular, was, until its partial closure in November 1973, part of the main route for the north-south traffic through the original township of Washington—areas now known as Washington, Columbia and Concord. With the growth of the new town, Spout Lane was carrying an increasing load of heavy through traffic, but it was a narrow winding road, in some places not more than 20 feet wide.

Both Spout Lane and Village Lane have been severed by a major road—the Eastern Highway—which is to link the centre of Washington with Sunderland. So their use by through traffic has been prevented and they are now usable for local access only. Through traffic now takes the recently opened Central Highway and has not been seriously affected. There is still a pedestrian link under the Eastern Highway, but, for vehicles, new local journey patterns must be used for journeys to schools, shops, etc. in one of the older areas of the town.

These closures did not come about without due publicity and opportunities for objection. My hon. Friend made some interesting suggestions in this connection, to which I may have time to refer. Proposals for the closures were first published in 1967 when the development corporation presented its master plan to the public. No objections were received during the objection period. There was further publicity in the Washington New Town Review which is a quarterly information leaflet published by the development corporation and delivered to householders in the new town. As early as the spring 1968 issue of the review, it was made clear that Spout Lane would be closed in the early 1970s to permit construction of the Eastern Highway.

Approval for construction of the Eastern Highway was given by the Secretary of State in 1971 under the New Towns Act 1965. The local planning authority, the former Durham County, was, as required by statute, consulted before the approval was given, but put forward no objection to the proposals.

The actual closures of parts of Spout Lane and Village Lane were made under 180 order by the Secretary of State only after the statutory procedures required under the Town and Country Planning Acts of 1962, 1968 and 1971 had been completed. The statutory notices were published in the London Gazette and in local newspapers and were displayed at the proposed points of closure. Once again no objection was received during the 28-day period. Following the making of such orders there is a right to challenge their validity in the High Court, but no such challenges were made. The order closing Spout Lane came into operation on 4th May 1972 and was brought into effect on 22nd November 1973. The Village Lane Order was made on 5th November 1973 and came into effect on 13th December 1973. In both cases the operative date was made as late as it seemed reasonably possible to make it, given the construction programme for the Eastern Highway.

The corporation had arranged that when Spout Lane was severed, the buses serving the area would be re-routed via the new town centre. The town centre already provides a very good range of shopping and commercial facilities. The corporation also gave advance warning of the proposed closures in its 1973 summer and autumn issues of the Washington New Town review.

My hon. Friend suggested that there might be trial periods for road closures so that people would have practical experience of what is involved before they made up their minds. I am grateful for the notice that he gave me of that point. I accept that this is an attractive concept and, indeed, one that might be worth trying in cases where the effect of alternative courses of action can be treated experimentally without undue expense. But in the present case it would not really have been practicable, if only because the experiment would have had to be conducted at a stage when, although the disadvantages of the closures would have been real and apparent, the compensatory advantages of the new developments would still have had to be left to the imagination; and when, moreover, the affected population, at the time of the experiment, would not necessarily have been substantially the same as at the time of the final bringing into effect.

In all these circumstances, the corporation and the Secretary of State between 181 them did as much as, and, indeed, a great deal more than, the law required to make it possible for the views of the public to be made known and taken into account.

There was, nevertheless, and perhaps inevitably, a surge of local feeling when the closures actually took place and the need for new journey patterns became an immediate problem. The corporation paid close attention to this and it is doing something about it.

First, a new bus service has been introduced, helped by a contribution from the development corporation, to improve the links between the severed areas: secondly, a new link road has been provided at a cost to the corporation of £35,000, and another, at a cost of £163,000, will be built as soon as financial circumstances permit. These two sections of road will in fact be on the line of the proposed Northern Expressway in which they would in due course be incorporated.

I understand from the corporation that local opposition to the closures has now subsided and, indeed, that people living in the affected areas are now beginning to appreciate the improved conditions resulting from the exclusion of through traffic. I hope that my information on this point is reasonably correct. In short, the statutory procedures for these road closures were properly completed and, in spite of all the opportunities offered, at no stage were any objections made. The improved traffic management resulting from the closures is in line with the proposals in the new town master plan, accepted by a previous Government after full consultation with the public and local authorities. The loss of through traffic has compensatory local advantages and the local disadvantages are being mitigated by improved bus services and link roads. The cost of reopening Spout Lane for buses only is in the region of £500,000 and it would require demolition of 26 houses. Moreover, the saving in bus journey times would not be significant.

Bearing all these factors in mind, my right hon. Friend does not consider that there is a sufficient case for reopening Spout Lane or Village Lane. My hon. Friend referred to the delay in construction of the Northern Expressway, a project which might further ease the diversion problems caused by the closure of Spout 182 Lane. Work on this route was to have started in the current financial year but unfortunately with the cut-back in public expenditure, this has not been possible; and I cannot yet say when this £4 million scheme might now be started.

I was grateful to my hon. Friend for commending Washington Development Corporation in its efforts to make the effects of development proposals more understandable by the people affected. I share his view that the development corporation has set a fine example in this field, as indeed have many other of our new towns.

My hon. Friend has suggested, nevertheless, that the corporation, foreseeing the difficulties arising from the closure of Spout Lane, might have delayed that closure until fully acceptable alternatives had been found. The answer must be that we all have something to learn from experience.

I would, incidentally, take the opportunity to remind my hon. Friend that the corporation is planning a further severance of Spout Lane because of the construction of a bypass at Concord. The statutory order—to which once again no objections were received—was made on 30th November 1973. I can, however, tell my hon. Friend that, in the view of the development corporation, reasonable alternative routes will have been provided in this case.

My hon. Friend also raised a more general question about the extent to which Washington New Town provides for the use of private motor transport. It is easy to be wise after the event and I will not say that, if we were to start afresh today, everything would look exactly the same: but certainly a new town must offer good transport facilities if it is to attract its industry and its population, and master plans cannot be altered every week. Washington can only stand to benefit from its improved links with Sunderland and Newcastle and with the national motorway system: and diversion of traffic on to these major roads has greatly improved the living conditions in the new town's residential areas.

My hon. Friend further suggested that more effective participation in road planning was needed. A new procedure for public participation in the choice of trunk 183 road routes was introduced in July 1973. This involves giving to the public details of possible alternative proposals, so that local reaction can be assessed. This procedure has been commended to local authorities for their own schemes but it is not mandatory. It is being kept under review as experience is gained, so that modifications and improvements may be introduced.

184 I hope that with those words and with the suggestion that new techniques are continually being developed my hon. Friend will feel satisfied, or at least glad that he raised this matter tonight. I hope that some of the answers that I have given will be satisfactory.