HC Deb 13 December 1976 vol 922 cc1150-62

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

11.58 p.m.

Mr. Phillip Whitehead (Derby, North)

We move from great and weighty matters of constitutional importance to matters which are within the sphere of existing local government but which affect its relationship to central Government and their agencies. The subject which I proopse to raise is the inadequacy of the Land Compensation Act in respect of road improvements.

I should like through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to thank Mr. Speaker for allowing me to change the subject of the debate at short notice due to distressing circumstances overtaking the constituent whose case I had hoped to raise. Mr. Speaker knows the reasons for the change, and I am obliged to him for his co-operation. as indeed I am to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, an old and valued friend in other than parliamentary terms, who is tonight answering the second Adjournment debate in succession, having done so on Friday last.

I shall be looking tonight at one aspect only of the Land Compensation Act. There are others, but since the Department of the Environment has once again hived off transport into a separate Department, it will not be possible for me this evening to raise those other matters which, I serve notice through my hon. Friend to my other right hon. and hon. Friends, I propose to raise in this House at a later stage. It is the inadequacy of other areas of the Land Compensation Act with regard to blight, the serving of blight notices, and the rights of owners and owner-occupiers in those areas which are, if I may so put it, foreshadowed by blight.

Tonight we are looking at a species of blight which affects those who live along highways which are not themselves altered physically or by designation as a result of roadworks but which must nevertheless bear a much heavier burden of traffic in direct consequence of roadworks elsewhere. I refer the House on this matter to section 9 (1), (5) and (7) of the Land Compensation Act 1973. In laying down the criteria for the eligibility of householders for compensation, it refers specifically to the carriageway of a highway which has been altered after the highway has been open to public traffic and to any public works other than a highway which have been reconstructed, extended or otherwise altered after they have been first used and to other questions with respect to public works. Those two matters must be part of the nature of the change before any claim can be made.

Subsection (7) says: For the avoidance of doubt, it is hereby declared that references in this section to a change of use do not include references to the intensification of an existing use. It is that which I propose to suggest is a lacuna in the law.

Under the terms on which matters can be raised on the Adjournment it is not open to me to suggest precisely how the Act can be amended. I wish to canvas the view that there is a lacuna in the law and that grave injustice is being done as a result, not merely to many of my constituents but to others who are in this odd position of being adjacent to a motorway or major road improvements but who are not themselves actually living alongside the improvements.

We are told by the excellent booklets issued by the Department of the Environment precisely what is now available for those who live alongside a road which has been upgraded in some way—which has had a carriageway added or which has been converted into a motorway or something of that kind. We are told that a great deal can be done by way of the offer of insulation, which rooms are eligible, how long the occupier has to make his application, and indeed the special arrangements which can be made to cover construction noise which is itself a temporary factor and a temporary nuisance. I throw that in be- cause I shall come later to the importance of this provision as it affects those who live alongside roads which have changed in status; where it does not affect them it might be argued that it might affect those who live on the other roads that I shall describe.

Because of the terms of the Land Compensation Act, we are already making rather more provisions available to those who live in the vicinity of aerodromes and who can claim therefore to be affected by the blanket of disturbance within the aerodrome and its flight paths than we do for those who live within the blanket area of nuisance and disturbance of motorways and upgraded or altered roads. There are many situations which have now developed—perhaps this was not foreseen in 1973 at the time of the Land Compensation Act, which was a major step forward—in which the householder can now find himself without a penny piece of compensation although he is in precisely the same position with regard to the degeneration of his property by noise nuisance and general disturbance and often the physical disintegration of his property, while someone who lives in a road which is covered by Section 9 can now get a substantial measure of compensation.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds)

I apologise for taking the hon. Member's time, but since I was partly responsible for the 1973 Act I should be grateful if he would make one thing clear to the House. Is he saying that when existing roads have deteriorated because they have been filled up to capacity by the traffic upon them, compensation should arise in those cases, rather than, as the Act makes clear, in the case of new construction which previously did not exist?

Mr. Whitehead

I must be careful that I do not stray out of order by suggesting that that is what I am saying. To put my argument into shorthand, where there is a causal connection between the amount of use on an existing road and new road construction adjacent to it, perhaps a mile or two miles way, I am saying that there should be a prima facie case for compensation.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

The hon. Gentleman is quite right in that the case be is making is not caught by the Act as I remember bringing it to the House.

Mr. Whitehead

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to him for steering through the legislation. There is a lacuna in the law but I am not saying that it is a bad Act. I am about to show precisely how it affects my constituents and many other people, especially those in urban areas, who find themselves in this difficulty.

As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will know, there has been a series of controversial road improvements in and around my constituency for some years. It was the headache of the Department of the Environment and now it is the headache of my hon. Friend's Department. The improvements are concerned with the upgrading of what is now generally referred to as the Leeds-Exeter trunk road.

As often happens when there is what is pejoratively called planning by attrition, there have been a number of road improvements that have usually been presented as bypasses and relief roads. They now appear to be joining up as part of the general strategy of the Department of the Environment for a major trunk road that is dual carriageway for its entire length. It is virtually an urban motorway as it would pass through my constituency.

Unfortunately the loose ends, as they are called, stop at either side of my constituency. There is a bypass at Mickle-over and a road improvement at Abbey Hill. These two improvements have had the effect of bringing a great deal of heavy lorry traffic, which is moving roughly in a south-west/north-east direction, through Derby. Some of it is trying to get between the two ends of improved road. There have been complaints. There has already been one fairly controversial public inquiry about joining the roads in what is called the Allestree link road. There will be another public inquiry in the summer of 1977.

A great deal of the traffic is doing something quite different from passing from one end to the other—namely, going through the town and taking the shortest possible rat-run to the M1, which is only seven miles away. It goes through the only surviving historic part of my con- stituency—namely,the Friar Gate conservation area. A third part of the traffic moves to the south-east, turns back on itself and heads for the southern part of Derby via the old southern bypass and out towards the southern extension of the M1.

The result of this traffic movement is that three different sets of increased heavy goods vehicle traffic are being decanted through Derby. The householders who live along the roads affected know that the increase in heavy traffic is a result of the road improvement two or three miles away from them. They are not able to claim for the disturbance that they have suffered under the Land Compensation Act. This is the problem.

Some of the people affected, including the gentleman whose case I shall quote, Mr. Gratton, will say in strong terms that they are well suited by the provision of the Allestree link road, which would take the problem away from their door steps. That piece of urban motorway through North Derby would take away their problem, but that would not be the case for those who live in other areas, as perhaps even more traffic would be generated and steered through Derby to get to the northern or southern exits for the M1 motorway. They would suffer a still further increased in traffic.

I take the case of a fairly typical constituent of mine who lives at Broadway, which is one of the roads most affected by the increase in traffic. I have been talking to him recently and he tells me that he has had to spend £600 on a complete set of double glazing. The walls of his house are cracking. The bathroom tiles are falling off the walls. His window frames have come loose. He cannot use wooden windows but must have metal frames and a metal structure throughout the house. Three windows which were reinstalled have cracked once again.

Here is a householder considerably beset by heavy traffic generated by road improvements two or three miles away. Many people along Broadway, Friar Gate and the southern outer ring road in Derby, which is in the Derby, South constituency, are in precisely this situation. They all say with some force that they cannot see that they are in a position different from that of people living along minor slip roads of the Mickleover by-pass, which is being constructed, who can at least claim under the Land Compensation Act for those rooms which face on to the "improved" road for double glazing and full insulation.

I believe that they are right. We must realise that in that legislation we have perpetrated, perhaps unthinkingly, an injustice. Because we hoped to guard against frivolous or unjustified applications under the legislation, we shut the door on a small but growing group of people who will be and who have been affected very deleteriously by the way in which the law operates.

Whatever the situation with regard to road improvements in Derby, we shall still end up with a situation which is absurdly anomalous. We have various proposals for the roads which I have mentioned. If the Allestree link road were made, there would be a whole series of proposals for the people who would be affected by it. Others might then find some of the burden lifted from them. But a second category would find that the construction of that road steered more traffic into the town of Derby, and therefore closer to them.

I can see some of the arguments which the Department may raise against any consideration of such cases. It will be said that hard cases make bad law, particularly at a time of restrictions on public expenditure. But I want to hear from the Department what would be the cost—I am sure that this is not the first time this anomaly has been raised, if not in the House at least in correspondence—of accepting a casual connection between some road improvements and traffic conditions elsewhere which have affected householders in the way I have described.

Secondly, what is the argument against the comparison I now make between inconvenience suffered by householders such as I have described and those who live adjacent to airports? If the inconvenience is to be temporary, because it is expected that a new motorway, bypass or link road will be made in the future and take away the nuisance, as could be argued in the case of the people in Broadway if the Allestree link road were made, what is the difference between the people in that position and those who come under the temporary inconvenience provi- sions already in the Land Compensation Act provided one lives right alongside the work which is going on? If people must suffer for two, three or four years as a result of a diversion of traffic past their houses, or the partial construction of a road which may or may not be finished, subject to later inquiries, I believe that they have just as strong a claim as those who are already covered by the provisions of the Act for temporary inconvenience.

Are the Government satisfied with the restrictions they impose upon traffic moving into towns in this way? Are they satisfied with their regulations about decibel noise levels in urban areas and their regulations for the passage of heavy goods vehicles? The Government cannot have it both ways. If they tell me tonight that it is out of the question that there should be an additional burden on the public purse, such as would come from compensating those groups of householders, they should accept that those householders' lives have been made intolerable largely because of the intrusion of a heavy goods traffic flow in part generated by the kind of road improvements which bring within the urban ambit this level of traffic and nuisance.

If the Government will not budge on any of the points I am raising, do they propose to rethink their whole strategy on traffic in towns and what can be done to ease the nuisance which people suffer—it is more than nuisance in many cases—from heavy goods vehicles being rerouted into and adjacent to urban and residential areas?

In conclusion, I want to leave my hon. Friend in no doubt whatsoever about the feelings of people in my constituency. My constituency is not untypical in this matter. It has never become a Birmingham, entirely sacrificed to the motor car. It has flirted with the motor car. The motor car and heavy road traffic generally have had certain advantages and a number of roads have been constructed to ease the flow of traffic through and near the town. However, we have never set out to destroy the whole town of Derby simply to facilitate the passage of traffic which is not radial and which has no business in the town but is simply taking the shortest route to get through it.

As a result of that traffic many people in my constituency are living in increasing worry amounting sometimes to despair as a result of a volume of intrusion, noise, disintegration and the decay of their environment and the amenities of that environment such as they would have found intolerable had they ever been given the opportunity of considering these matters when road improvements, so-called, elsewhere in the town and vicinity were first bruited.

I hope that my hon. Friend will address himself to the matters that I have raised and will be able to tell me that the Government have not merely taken in hand these problems but are also actively considering rectifying this lacuna in the law.

12.16 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. John Horam)

My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) has raised an interesting, important and, I am afraid, rather difficult topic which will be of concern to constituents of many hon. Members. He has dealt with this matter in his usual fluent, helpful and interesting way. If my response is less helpful and encouraging than might have been wished for by him, let me make it clear that the reason is not lack of understanding or sympathy.

As the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) will be aware, excessive traffic noise and other effects of busy roads are a bane of modern living. Anyone who suffers them deserves the sympathy of all hon. Members. As one of the representatives of the largest town on the A1 trunk road between London and Newcastle-Gateshead, perhaps I may say that my constituents have as much to suffer from as anyone in that respect.

What can effectively be done to relieve such conditions by means of additional legislation is another matter, however, particularly at present when we are all subject to severe financial restraints. Indeed, it is perhaps fortunate that my hon. Friend was able to have this Adjournment debate tonight rather than on Wednesday evening, when the question of severe financial restraints might have been stressed even more strongly than I have to stress it tonight.

The Land Compensation Act 1973 introduced a completely new concept into the legislation of this country. For the first time people whose property was depreciated in value by the physical effects caused by the use of new public works became entitled to compensation, even though they had had no land taken from them for the purpose of carrying out the works.

Under the Act public works in relation to roads means the construction of a new highway or the alteration of the location, width or level of a length of carriageway. So, where any such new works were brought into use on or after 17th October 1969 it became open to owners of physically affected properties to claim compensation from the highway authority. In passing, I should like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, who piloted this really quite revolutionary Act through the House of Commons.

To return, however, to the principles of the Act, I emphasise that it provided for compensation only for depreciation directly attributable, as my hon. Friend said, to the use of new public works, such as roads. Similarly the Noise Insulation Regulations made under the Act enable highway authorities to provide double glazing and so on as protection only against extra noise produced by the use of new or altered roads. Thus the legislation hangs together in this sense and is consistent in not dealing with unaltered roads which simply happen to have or to acquire heavy flows of traffic. The House will recognise readily that, up and down the country, much of the nuisance caused by road traffic lies, therefore, completely outside the scope of the Act. My hon. Friend was complaining precisely about this point.

The exclusion of unaltered roads may seem especially hard where they become what are known as "feeder" roads for other roads which may be new constructions. To think of any extension of the compensation provisions is, I am afraid, somewhat academic in the current financial climate. But, were times more propitious, one might think of such cases as being specially deserving of consideration.

I have to say, however, that the subject would be found to be bristling with difficulties, despite one's sympathy for it. Traffic increase can result equally from traffic management schemes, such as one-way systems. The change can be permanent or temporary. It can result from other causes, such as new private development or even the growth in popularity of a tourist attraction, which are hardly the responsibility of the highway authority to which this is specifically linked. Traffic in a given area may change in volume and character in any event. Who is to say how much of the change is attributable to some piece of road construction or improvement? What geographical limits would be applied? Could repercussions many miles or dozens of miles away be put forward in support of a claim?

My hon. Friend asked me some specific questions. First, he asked whether there had been any calculation of the cost of widening the provisions of the Act to take in these feeder roads. The cost has not been calculated, but I suspect that it would be enormous if it were calculated.

Then my hon. Friend asked about the temporary use of these roads by construction firms, and so on, and the consequences of that. The situation there is rather better. In such circumstances, where roads are used by more traffic in the course of constructing another road nearby, there is some discretion for the Department to help out, and in many cases, where they are directly affected by new works, it can even buy up the properties in question. So there is the possibility of help in the temporary consequences of new construction.

The situation with airports is slightly different. There is a more general problem here which is recognised specifically as such, and I am not sure that we can draw an analogy with road noise in quite the same way. It would also still be subject to the problem of expense.

I do not wish to rule out consideration of any constructive suggestion which may arise from consideration of the points that my hon. Friend made when the economic climate has eased again. But I must make it clear that at the moment we could not consider such a thing.

Mr. Whitehead

Before my hon. Friend leaves that, I take his remark about the difficulty of setting boundaries to any such suggestions, but will he not accept that where a route lay between two improved roads and was measured by, for example, the span of one local authority, it would be a case where one could see clearly the terms of the road intrusion, the reasons for it, and the nature of the compensation which would be needed?

Mr. Horam

Yes, but even there one might run into difficulties. One road which may be of an even shorter length and which runs through two authorities may be subject to the same problem. It is essentially a matter of drawing arbitrary limits. Where exactly should we stop, and what is the most of ever-widening those limts?

As for other ways of dealing with the problem to which my hon. Friend rightly drew attention, especially in his own area, one way is the one that he mentioned as regards the Allestree link road. These difficulties can be solved by building new roads which bypass the areas of difficulty. In other areas—for instance, in the Friar Gate conservation area, which has more heavy traffic as a result of the building of these two motorways near that area—it may be possible to use traffic management schemes to reduce the impact of heavy lorries.

At the same time, I can tell my hon. Friend that we are pursuing actively the problem of noise levels both through domestic legislation and in the context of the EEC, where there is considerable activity on this point. I know that that is in a very active stage at the moment, and I hope that positive results will flow from it. It is a matter which the Government are very keen to follow up.

There is also the Dykes Act, sponsored by the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes)—indeed, I was myself one of its sponsors—under which local authorities have to publish proposals for banning lorries from particularly sensitive areas by 1st January next year. That Act is progressing well. We now have a comprehensive list of what local authorities have done, and I hope to tell the hon. Member for Harrow East in a few days' time what the situation is.

In those areas where we can take positive traffic management measures to minimise the environmental consequences of heavy traffic, we are doing a reasonably good job. The problem with specific parts of the Act is in drawing a line and setting a financial limit to what we can do. If my hon. Friend likes to raise the problems of Derby on the Adjournment—problems which may be solved by traffic management measures or schemes of road building—I shall be delighted. I might then have a hat-trick of such Adjournment debates, since I have now had two.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

How is the quiet heavy lorry project going? If and when the time comes that there is more money, would it not be more useful to consider lowering the decibel limit at which property affected qualifies for compensation? Rather than extend the scheme horizontally into areas, for which the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) so persuasively argued, the change should surely be in the direction of compensating for noise rather than on area.

Mr. Horam

I shall write to the hon. Gentleman about the progress of the quiet heavy lorry scheme, since I cannot give him the answer off-hand. But I am against lowering the decibel limit at the moment. The hon. Gentleman's own regulations were rather generous on this point. They recognised, as regard direct compensation, that the noise had only to increase by one decibel—an imperceptible amount—to qualify for compensation. They are a generous provision in that respect and is something on which the hon. Gentleman should congratulate himself. But I cannot guarantee to lower the level further, certainly not in the present circumstances

I think that the situation my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North is talking about in Derby may—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Monday evening, 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 twenty-eight minutes past Twelve o'clock.