HC Deb 16 February 1987 vol 110 cc734-41 8.52 pm
Mr. Keith Raffan (Delyn)

On 18, 19 and 20 February 1975, almost exactly 12 years ago to the day, a public inquiry was held into the proposed Mold bypass. On 25 July 1977 the then Secretary of State for Wales made the line order announcing his decision on the route. Between then and earlier this year the controversy concerning the road has focused entirely on the timing of its construction.

I first raised the matter with the Welsh Office a month after I was elected, on 19 July 1983. I was told by the then Minister of State, Welsh Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Sir J. Stradling Thomas), that preparation on the Mold bypass has been accelerated with a view to construction starting before the end of 1988".—[Official Report. 19 July 1983; Vol. 46, c. 84.]

I raised the matter again during Welsh questions on 24 March 1986. Two days later, during the Welsh Grand Committee debate on "The Roads Programme in Wales", my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales intervened to make the following statement: I reassure my hon. Friend that we expect the scheme to start on the original schedule—at the beginning of the new period and not at the end of it. We do not anticipate any delay, because we understand the importance of the scheme."—[Official Report, Welsh Grand Committee, 26 March 1986; c. 31.]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wyn Roberts)

Would my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Raffan

I help my hon. Friend by adding that "at the beginning of the new period" meant the beginning of the time band of January 1988 to December 1990.

Mr. Roberts

My hon. Friend will be aware that the debate in the Welsh Grand Committee took place on 26 March. He will also be aware that my right hon. Friend did not receive the consultants' report, which I am sure my hon. Friend will talk about, until the autumn of 1986.

Mr. Raffan

That is not the point. My hon. Friend has the chronology out of order. Perhaps I can take the chronology, without my hon. Friend having to intervene again, through to the end of my speech. The vexed question which was at the centre of the consultants' report — the resiting of the A541 roundabout, otherwise referred to as the Buckley road roundabout — was a matter first raised by the Clwyd county council surveyor 12 years ago. If my right hon. Friend was not aware of that central problem when he intervened in my speech on 26 March 1986, one might ask why his officials had not informed him of it. That is one of the questions that I will put to my hon. Friend.

In good faith, I passed on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's assurance to Mold town council. I heard nothing further until I led a deputation from the council to see my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State on 1 December 1986. The purpose of that meeting was to deliver a petition that had been signed by more than 4,000 local people, pressing on my hon Friend the urgent need for the construction of the bypass to relieve the town of traffic congestion and provide improved access to the Bromfield park industrial estate and the Nercwys road industrial park. It was then for the first time, like the proverbial bolt fom the blue, that my hon. Friend said that there was a problem over the siting of the proposed roundabout on the A541 otherwise known as the Buckley road. That was confirmed in a letter that my hon. Friend wrote to me three days later on 4 December 1986. It says: I can confirm that we are pressing on with the preparation of the by-pass proposals but, as I mentioned to you, the Clwyd County Surveyor has expressed very serious reservations about the location of a new roundabout which it is proposed to provide as part of these proposals where the new by-pass crosses the Buckley Road. The County Surveyor fears that the present location will cause traffic leaving the town in the peak hours to back-up into the town centre. I am sure that you would agree with me that if this were to happen when the new by-pass is open to traffic it would indeed have serious consequences for town traffic which must be avoided. To this end, our consultants were asked to investigate the matter and we received their report a few weeks ago. This recommends the relocation of the Buckley Road roundabout further to the east of the present proposed position.

I and other members of the deputation from Mold town council understandably inferred from what the Minister said to us, and subsequently confirmed in writing, that the problem over the new roundabout had emerged suddenly, that the county surveyor had only recently expressed his reservations and that consultants had subsequently, even more recently, been appointed to look at the problem.

The truth is somewhat different. The county surveyor, Mr. Alastair Donaldson, has sent me copies of correspondence relating to the matter. He expressed his concern about the siting of the new roundabout not last year, not even the year before, but on 16 June 1975 in a letter to the then director of highways at the Welsh Office, Mr. Dennis Hall. On 28 February 1978, when work on the design of the scheme was resumed, Mr. Hall wrote to the Clwyd county surveyor to inform him that consulting engineers, Ward Ashcroft and Parkman, were being directed to look again at the siting of the roundabout and to consult him on the subject.

Let the county surveyor take up the story. I quote from his letter to me dated 9 February 1987: I did put forward one or two ideas to the Consultants, but no detailed design was done by my staff and at no time have I ever seen any plan produced by the Consultants which either incorporated any of the ideas which I put forward or any of their own ideas for improving the traffic flow at the new roundabout and A549/A541 Junction. Bearing in mind that the County Council are the Local Highway Authority for no less than four roads which are affected by the new Mold Bypass, you might think that rather extraordinary. Indeed, I had to personally attend the Exhibition in Mold to see the larger scale plans of the new proposals since I do not have copies, with the result that I have been unable to consult Members of the County Council to obtain their views. He eventually received copies of the larger scale plans on Friday 6 February.

All this raises many questions, the detailed answers to which I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister. As the problem over the new roundabout was first highlighted 12 years ago, why did the Welsh Office highways department not resolve the problem long ago? Why did officials wait until after the last minute, knowing that this would delay construction of the road and so render worthless my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's public commitment?

When was my hon. Friend aware that the Clwyd county council surveyor had expressed reservations about the new roundabout not a few months ago but 12 years ago? When was my hon. Friend aware that consultants had been directed to look at the roundabout problem nine years ago? Are the consultants directed to look at the roundabout problem in 1978 the same as those mentioned in my hon. Friend's letter of 4 December? If so, why did they take so long to report? And why was the Clwyd county surveyor never consulted in advance either on the consultants' report or subsequently on the Welsh Office highways department suggested changes in the alignment of the Mold bypass? If the county surveyor had been consulted, he could have told the present director of highways, Mr. George Mercer, what he told me in his letter of 9 February. He said: Whilst the roundabout which is in close proximity to the A549/A541 junction has been moved southward to the other side of the junction, the new proposals do not show how the Y junction of the A549 and the A541 is to tied into the new roundabout … Although the Consultants at the exhibition did give me an indication of one or two of the ideas which they have in mind, the fact remains that even with the new line of the Bypass, the original problem to which I drew attention in my letter of 16 June, 1975 has still not been properly tackled.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Buckley road roundabout problem was raised 12 years ago, then again nine years ago, and then promptly forgotten. When the then Minister of State told me in July 1983 that preparation work on the Mold bypass has been accelerated that was presumably "Yes, Minister" jargon for, "We had better dig out the plans and files and have a look at them." Somebody apparently even forgot to do that and it took my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's fulsome commitment in the middle of my Welsh Grand Committee speech last year to flash the amber alert and set the alarm bells ringing.

Then the Welsh Office highways department did a very un-Sir Humphrey-like thing. It flew into a panic. What other conclusion can we draw? After all, when I went with the Mold town council deputation to meet my hon. Friend on 1 December, he said that he had received the consultants' report recommending the relocation of the roundabout only a few weeks ago. He only fleetingly, in passing, mentioned that it would be necessary, as a result, to amend the route. We were shown no detailed large scale plans or elevations. Why? Presumably because they had not been drawn up. It was only at the public exhibition in Mold at the beginning of this month that I or anybody else realised just how substantial and unacceptable would be the realignment resulting from the resiting of the roundabout.

I cannot believe that the suggested realignment was not drawn up after a full survey or considerable thought. As the Clwyd county surveyor has said, it does not effectively tackle the original roundabout problem. It swings unacceptably close to the communities of Mynydd Isa and Bryn-y-Baal. It runs in part through a deep gulley, where it will have a very steep gradient. It severs the two main sewer pipes serving Mynydd Isa which will have to be relaid. It passes through an area where there are uncapped mine shafts. It destroys the only wooded area between Mynydd Isa and Mold. It is based on no traffic survey.

I was told by the director of highways that a traffic survey is to be carried out in April, because that is "an average month", but summer is when congestion is at its worst. We want not a road that is adequate for an average month but a road that is satisfactory in the worst traffic months of the year.

If adopted, the realignment would lead to a delay in construction not of months but of years. My hon. Friend will remember that he assured me and the Mold town council deputation on 1 December that the delay would be only months, and only a few months at that.

The town of Mold needs a bypass to relieve traffic congestion in the town, which is almost impossible to get through in the summer months. It needs it to divert heavy quarry traffic away from the town centre. It needs it to give improved access to, and so increase the attraction of, the Bromfield park industrial estate and the Nercwys road industrial park. That means additional access from the Nercwys road, which is not at present shown on the plans.

Mold needs the bypass where it will do least environmental damage to the town and the neighbouring communities of Mynydd Isa and Bryn-y-Baal. Mold needs a bypass along the lines of the originally proposed route certainly modifying and possibly dispensing altogether with the Buckley road roundabout, which I am told by the Minister's officials is a practical possibility. The new link design criteria should be incorporated as far as possible. We need that bypass to be started, as promised by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, as near as possible to the beginning of the period 1988–90.

"Mold forgotten by not bypassed" was the understandable slogan used by members of Mold town council when they led the campaign for an early start on the original bypass scheme. We now look to my hon. Friend and the Welsh Office to change that to "Mold not forgotten but bypassed."

9.5 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wyn Roberts)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Raffan) on securing this debate and the eloquent way in which he has presented his case. He has been assiduous in pursuing the interests of his constituents and I recognise the real concern he has about the need for a bypass of Mold. In pursuing that concern I am sure that he has had to confront the problem which Ministers so frequently face in these matters, that is, the need to undertake large projects which are in the public interest but which have quite dramatic and disturbing effects on the lives of individuals. The prescribed statutory procedures are designed, of course, to ensure that full account is taken of all the different interests and views.

My hon. Friend has raised a number of pertinent issues and has posed some searching questions and I hope that I shall be able to satisfy him on those matters. But first, I think that it might be helpful to set my remarks in a more general context — indeed, it is essential that I do so. When the Government assumed office in 1979 we inherited the road construction programme of our predecessors. It was an early priority for the Government to review that in the context of our overall economic objectives. Our first review of "Roads in Wales 1980" made clear the overriding importance of tailoring our major capital investment programmes to suit those objectives. We have sustained a substantial road improvement programme and have since continued to place great emphasis on those important infrastructural improvements as a key factor in our programme for economic recovery. That has been re-emphasised in our subsequent "Roads in Wales" publications in 1983 and 1985.

I make no apologies for setting on record again the fact that since 1979 we have spent over £700 million on improving the road infrastructure. Schemes costing £260 million are currently in progress. New schemes costing £80 million should start in the next financial year and further investment of £280 million is planned to start before the end of 1990. Much of that investment has been and will be in the county of Clwyd, which embraces my hon. Friend's constituency, and will bring undoubted benefit to its people. Major bypasses were completed east of Abergele in 1981, at Hawarden in 1984, Colwyn Bay in 1985, and Holywell and Bodelwyddan in 1986. Work is in progress on bypasses at Ruabon and Gresford-Pulford and that for Newbridge should be completed later this year. My hon. Friend will not deny the high priority accorded to those schemes.

My hon. Friend knows that in constructing our programme we placed emphasis first on the M4 in south Wales and, more recently, on the enormous task of dualling the A55 across north Wales which will bring undoubted benefits. These massive schemes have, of course, taken the lion's share of our financial and staff resources and this has inevitably meant that other very worthwhile improvements have not been able to progress as quickly as we would have liked. However, the "Roads in Wales" programme continues as our forward commitment and we can look forward to a large number of projects starting within the next three or four years.

Not surprisingly, my hon. Friend has expressed concern about the time taken to progress with the Mold scheme in particular. He will recall from earlier debates, and from correspondence that I have exchanged with him, that the estimated start date for any scheme must be regarded as provisional. There are many factors which affect progress and last year I specifically drew his attention to the important qualification in "Roads in Wales 1985" that the timing of schemes will depend on such things as public reaction to proposals, the ease or difficulty of acquiring land, the complexity of engineering problems, the time needed to complete essential statutory procedures and the availability of resources. Nonetheless, we still expect that the Mold bypass will be started in the time band indicated in "Roads in Wales".

My hon. Friend referred to the fact that a line for the Mold bypass was fixed as long ago as 1977 but, even before the decision letter announcing that was published, our predecessors had announced—on 11 February 1976 — that work on preparing this scheme, along with several others, was being deferred in order to concentrate resources on higher priority projects. Indeed, the decision letter issued in September 1977—about two years after the inquiry — deferred the Mold bypass proposals "indefinitely". However, work was reactivated in 1978, hut, as I mentioned earlier, there were many competing priorities with which to contend. There were other complications.

Mr. Raffan

My hon. Friend rightly says that work on preparing the scheme was resumed in 1978. I said earlier that the consultants were directed by the then director of highways at the Welsh Office to examine the problem of the roundabout then. I know how long preparing road works takes. The gestation period is long. But the central part of my speech was about the roundabout. The county surveyor did not get in touch with the Welsh Office about it last year, but in 1975, and the consultants were directed to look at the problem in 1978. Why has there been deathly silence since then?

Mr. Roberts

I am coming to that. I shall deal with all the points in sequence.

The 1977 decision letter mentioned that new design standards for roundabouts required fresh examination of the junctions included in the planned route for the bypass. But perhaps more significantly, shortly after his appointment as Clwyd county surveyor, Mr. Alastair Donaldson had twice written to the Department—as early as 1975—expressing his concern at the proposed location of the Pont Pentre roundabout on the A549. It was his view that the suggested location for this roundabout would cause serious traffic difficulties and he suggested that the Department should reconsider the location. I understand that he recognised then that his intervention between the date of the public inquiry, but before the announcement of a decision, was difficult and that the statutory process would have to continue, but he made it clear that, as the scheme progressed, he would at every stage be pressing for a reassessment of this proposed roundabout in order that the construction of the trunk road did not impose county road problems on the county. As my hon. Friend knows only too well, the A549 and the A541 are county roads.

These issues inevitably meant complete reappraisal of the scheme and, unfortunately, this coincided with a period when design and other resources were fully stretched in progressing the other elements of the very substantial road programme that I have already described. It was, I understand, not easy to find a solution which would satisfy the surveyor's concerns and provide a bypass which would meet new highway design standards introduced in 1981. These were further to the criteria spoken about earlier as being required to be dealt with in 1978. A further complication to all this arose as a result of the changing traffic patterns resulting from the significant development which occurred in that area, not least at Mynydd Isa and at the Bryn Coch estate.

Mr. Raffan

My hon. Friend says that there was a significant change in traffic patterns. Why was a traffic survey not undertaken at that time? I have been told by the present director of highways that no traffic survey has been undertaken and that one will be carried out over a couple of days in April. Despite the changes in the built-up area at Mynydd Isa, Bryn-y-Baal and the surrounding area, no traffic survey was undertaken.

Mr. Roberts

We had some traffic figures and were content to work on the basis of those at that time. The developments in that area were quite considerable. First, the railway closed on 1 January 1984. My hon. Friend has already spoken about the Mynydd Isa residential development. There was a development on the Bromfield industrial estate. The Bryn Coch residential estate was being developed and industrial development was proposed near Nercwys road. Many of these developments resulted in expansion and, of course, there were changes in the highway network and traffic flows as a result of the Hawarden bypass.

Change has been a continuing factor in the story of the bypass and so too have changes in the criteria for roundabouts and for road alignment. As I said, it was not at all easy to find a solution to these problems. For the moment it must suffice for me to say that, because of these complications and the competing priorities, the revised proposals were not brought forward until the autumn of last year. When he spoke at the Welsh Grand Committee my right hon. Friend was speaking with the best knowledge that was available to him at the time. My hon. Friend asks when I became aware of various factors. I did not know that changes were recommended until the consultants reported in the autumn of last year.

Mr. Raffan

My hon. Friend has not yet answered the question that I put to him. The consultants were directed to look at this problem as far back as 1978. I presume the consultants were not changed and must have looked at the problem. My hon. Friend's officials must have been aware of the problem and surely they should have made him aware of it before last autumn. Even if my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales cannot be expected to be aware of a detail like this, my hon. Friend ought to have been. I do not understand why the consultants' report came as such a surprise to him when they had been specifically asked to look at the roundabout problem. I do not understand either why the Clwyd county surveyor was not directly consulted at that point, especially as the suggested changes affected four local roads for which he has direct responsibility.

Mr. Roberts

The consultants were given various directions at different times from 1978. They were asked to take into account changes in the criteria for roundabouts, road alignments, and so on. Of course, they had to take into account as well all those developments in the area to which I have referred.

Mr. Raffan

Will my hon. Friend answer the point about the county surveyor?

Mr. Roberts

The county surveyor also has his problems with the county roads, but our main interest has obviously been in that road which is the responsibility of the Welsh Office.

My hon. Friend will recall that I outlined the revised proposals to him when he brought a deputation from Mold to see me last December. Although I acknowledge that I was not able to give him details of the new line, at least I was able to tell him that a new line was proposed.

I turn now to the suggestion that the recent consultation had no real purpose because our minds are firmly set on the revised line. My hon. Friend will recognise that I must be careful not to prejudge later decisions, but I can assure him that the consultation is real and that we shall give the most careful consideration to the points being put to us. If the consultation leaflet gave the impression that all is already decided, that was certainly not the intention.

It will be realised, I am sure, that there can be only a limited range of options available in finding a cost-effective solution in this location. The Department's latest proposals have attracted criticism because the line of the bypass is too close to housing at Mynydd Isa, even though it would be in deep cutting in that area, partly for the benefit of residents there. I know that my hon. Friend is keen that we should adhere to the original route, but I am told that this could be done only if there was a radical reappraisal of the Pont Pentre junction, perhaps involving grade separation. That would undoubtedly add greatly to the cost of the scheme and we should have to undertake a fresh economic evaluation of the whole project. Nevertheless, in view of the comments that we have received, I have asked officials to look at the possibilities. An important prerequisite would be an up-to-date origin and destination survey of traffic on roads leading into Mold better to assess predicted changes in traffic patterns and, as my hon. Friend knows, this is being commissioned in April.

I have seen it suggested recently in some quarters that we have introduced these revised proposals—I emphasise again that they are just proposals—to delay matters. I shall not waste any time on that bizarre suggestion but just say that that simply is not the case.

I have tried to explain why progress on this scheme has not been as quick as my hon. Friend and his constituents would like, but let me reassure him that we do not wish to incur unnecessary delay and, indeed, we would wish to press on as quickly as we can consonant with finding a solution which would be cost-effective and would provide the best answer to all the problems involved. The first priority must be to agree the line for the bypass so that soil surveys and detailed design can proceed. A great deal of work remains to be done, including probably the preparation of amended highway orders, and we have yet precisely to identify the land requirement and secure compulsory purchase powers.

Whichever route we eventually decide to adopt, some of my hon. Friend's constituents will be affected. That is inescapable. Therefore, we can anticipate objections and another public inquiry before final decisions can be reached. It would be unwise of me to speculate on the timetable because there are so many uncertainties, as I mentioned earlier. However, I confirm again that there will be no needless delay on our part. We would hope to meet the timetable indicated in "Roads in Wales 1985."

I fully understand my hon. Friend's concern for early progress on this scheme—we all wish to see that—but I put it to him that, important though rapid progress is, it is far more important that we should achieve a road improvement which will provide the best possible solution at Mold. We should be failing in our duty if we sought to do anything less and I trust that my hon. Friend can accept this.