Trunk Roads (Leicestershire) (Hansard, 19 November 1991)

§ Sir John Farr (Harborough)
I am most grateful to have the opportunity to develop once again on the Adjournment the problems associated with trunk roads in Leicestershire. I am especially grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for Roads and Traffic, who has paid particular attention to the problem over recent months to try to get things right.
As my hon. Friend may know, three problems concern us. The first is what is known as the EDDR—the eastern district distributor road. The second problem is the new proposed Leicester eastern bypass and the third, which concerns me very much, is one of the most important east-west roads in the county—the A427 which runs from Loughborough to Market Harborough.
The eastern district distributor road is part of the relief road system round the city of Leicester. My hon. Friend, who has been courteous and kind in meeting delegations led by me and by other hon. Members to discuss the problem, has pointed out from time to time that the scheme is the responsibility of the county council.
The county council started the EDDR almost 50 years ago and it is still not finished. My hon. Friend was kind enough to tell me in answer to a question on the third problem, asking him whether he would make the east-west A427 a trunk road, that it came under the county council's responsibility for bypasses. Yet in the 20 or so years during which we have been associated with processions and demonstrations about the A427, not a single bypass has been built.
The EDDR was planned and begun more than 50 years ago under the aegis of the county council. The House and the public at large are entitled to study the performance, or lack of it, of the county council in that respect after 50 years. From the results on the ground, it seems that there is a great deal left to be desired. At the present speed of work on the EDDR—when it is finished it will provide much relief for traffic going round the city—the road is unlikely to be completed this millenium. In other words, it is unlikely to be completed before the year 2000.
The part of the Leicester relief road known as the SDDR—the southern district distributor road—is already discharging traffic on to the A6 at Oadby, a borough in my constituency, to the south of the city. In fact, the SDDR, upon which work has progressed well and speedily—it is all part of the relief road system round the city—has started to discharge traffic at a great rate on to the A6 at Oadby, which is seeking to percolate further south on the A6 or further east towards the A47.
When the traffic reaches the end of the SDDR at Oadby, there is nowhere else for it to go. As far as I can see, there is not likely to be anywhere for it to go for the next five or 10 years, except east on the A47 or south on the A6. There is no connecting link. Part of the EDDR is missing and that leaves a gap of two or three miles. As I have said, that stretch of road is not likely to be completed this millenium.
Most of my constituents find it amazing that that part of the road is missing, given that it is a planned and agreed eastern relief road for city traffic. I say planned and agreed, because, as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, more than 246 one public inquiry has taken place and the go-ahead has been given after all the proper formalities have been gone through. The EDDR, which is causing so much concern among my constituents, is the last piece of the Leicester ring road. Nine tenths of the Leicester ring road is finished and has been for some years. But the remaining tenth, on the eastern side of the city, running from Humberstone to the A6 at Oadby is still held up.
My hon. Friends and I feel justified in asking for a special debate to call attention to the ridiculous fact that, at Humberstone, which is part of the EDDR route, a mile of new road costing £1.5 million has stood finished and unopened for over a year, while the county and city councils argue about a proposed route by the side of the clinic on Scraptoft lane through a recreation area which happens to be owned by the city council. Meanwhile, the sealed-off stretch is being vandalised while it stands idle.
I find it extraordinary that the EDDR, planned for over 50 years, has been blocked by the city council. The council built 120 new houses on Goodwood road, which, in my view, should be demolished forthwith. Many people feel that that constituted a deliberate attempt by the city council to block Goodwood road, even though the council knew that it was part of the long-planned eastern relief road. That was an ill-advised planning decision by the city council, and questions could well be asked about the considerable waste of public money involved in building the new houses in Goodwood road.
Most Conservatives in the county, and many in the city, feel that the EDDR must go ahead, and must still follow the Goodwood road route, even if the houses there have to be soundproofed. Colchester road is also part of the planned route: it is already dual carriageway and presents no problems.
As I said a moment ago, I have carefully considered the problems that I have tried to outline tonight. I have written to my hon. Friend the Minister and recently he was kind enough to meet a delegation of Conservative Leicestershire county councillors, Oadby and Wigston borough councillors and Harborough district councillors. The united view of the delegation was that the EDDR must forge ahead on the agreed route along Goodwood road soon and on the planned route to the A6 to relieve traffic at Oadby.
When we raised those points at the meeting, the Minister made the perfectly valid point that the responsibility for the EDDR was not his. He said that it was the responsibility of the county council. However, the county council's engineer said that, while the council is acting as the Department's agent, no money can be spent on speeding up the EDDR without the Minister's specific consent. Some of us hope tonight to persuade the Minister that the county council should be authorised to speed up completion of the EDDR before the most unimaginable chaos occurs in Oadby in my constituency.
My next point concerns the Leicester eastern bypass. I want to place on record my appreciation of the Minister's kind and careful attention to the views of the delegation consisting of Conservative county councillors, borough councillors and district councillors. One of the reasons for tonight's debate is to try to persuade my hon. Friend the Minister that the points raised by the delegation should at least be considered before the Leicester eastern bypass is proceeded with.
We were united when we asked the Minister why Leicestershire county council, Oadby and Wigston 247 borough council and Harborough district council were not consulted. None of them was informed about the bypass. Even hon. Members were not asked for an opinion. That is regrettable, because if the Minister had taken the trouble to consult some of his colleagues in the House, he would have been told not to hurry over the bypass.
A solution is being sought today to a problem that many of us feel will not arise until the end of the century provided that the link—the EDDR—is made to work. It is essential to get that working like a clock and if that is achieved, the need for an eastern bypass will recede into the mists of next century. There is no hurry. The EDDR should be sorted out and a much more relaxed programme for an eastern bypass could then be adopted.
Another important point that I raised with the Minister when we met him—it was a point of which I should have given him notice—continues to recur relates to the name of the consultants that he has appointed for the new Leicester eastern bypass. We raised that subject at the meeting at the Department the other day. We said that we were unhappy with Travers Morgan, which had been appointed as agent for the Leicester eastern bypass, as it was the agent employed by the Co-operative Wholesale Society for its Stretton Magna scheme, which involves urbanising up to 5,000 acres in my constituency near Oadby with golf courses, business parks—the lot.
That organisation certainly was engaged in a study at the request of the CWS. Of course, the CWS farms to a great degree in Leicestershire. Travers Morgan, at the time of the submission of the CWS project a year or two ago, did the work for the CWS proposed link road, which it was going to throw in as a sweetener, between the A47 and the A6.
So far, I have been on ground which the Minister cannot challenge, because I am quite exact in my information. However, there is a question mark over the impartiality of Travis Morgan. If Travis Morgan had already done a good deal of the work for the proposed Leicester eastern bypass, as employee and having been paid a fee by the CWS to do the work only a year or two ago, surely it was able to use that recently acquired knowledge to submit to the Department a tender which was probably unfairly competitive because the organisation had already done a great deal of the ground work as a paid agent of the CWS.
The House is entitled to know the actual tender figures for the new Leicester eastern bypass and by how much did Travers Morgan win the contract. If the gap was large, did it represent best practice? With that organisation's previous knowledge, paid for by the CWS, it would seem that, to put it mildly, that was, questionable. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, in such matters of public concern, everything must be seen to be absolutely above board.
I have been asked about the presence of Travers Morgan in preparing for the Minister's Department a scheme for much of the work which it had already carried out. When Travers Morgan quoted, were the other tendering companies aware of Travers Morgan's previous involvement? What would their feelings be? Can my hon. Friend the Minister assure me that they were informed, as they should have been, in the public interest? If they were not informed and if there was anything—I will not say 248 "underhand"; not as open as it should have been—would not it be best, to restore public confidence to the issue, for Travers Morgan to be dropped as consultants for the Leicester eastern bypass and for fresh consultants to be appointed?
The A427 from Lutterworth to Market Harborough is also a county council road. Quite rightly, in answer to questions that I have tabled in the past couple of weeks, my hon. Friend the Minister has said that he is not responsible and that it is a matter for the county council. The county council has again written to me to say that, as far as Leicester is concerned, only three bypasses can be funded annually in the county, simply because the Minister quite properly keeps his fingers on the till. Three bypasses a year in Leicestershire means that plans for bypasses that are badly needed on the A427 at towns such as Theddingworth fade away into the dim and distant future.
The A427 runs from Lutterworth to Market Harborough. Only recently there was a march by protesters along the whole length of the road. Some had endearing messages for me and some had not so endearing messages for the Government. It is all recorded on film. The A427 is an important little road. It is the main southern east-west road running through the county. The whole lot needs improving.

§ Mr. Michael Latham (Rutland and Melton)
Hear, hear.

§ Sir John Farr
I am glad to have the support of my hon. Friend, who knows the road well. It aggravated the people who were marching the other day that, over 15 years ago, Leicestershire county council agreed a bypass plan for Theddingworth. The plan was about to go ahead. Land was acquired. The scheme had been approved, but it was suddenly dropped like a hot potato because the council had heard that a road called the A1-M1 link road was due to be built in another county.
The county council lost interest in improving the A427 in any manner. Many of us feel that that is a shoddy way to treat people who have the most terrible problems. Villages are almost snuffed out by articulated vehicles every day. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to examine once again the problem of the A427 at Theddingworth. It is a strategic road. Will he authorise, or instruct the county council to authorise, the early commencement of a bypass for Theddingworth and one or two other communities?

§ The Minister for Roads and Traffic (Mr. Christopher Chope)
It is with considerable diffidence that I respond to an Adjournment debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir John Farr), who has served his area of Leicestershire for more than 20 years with such distinction. He is an expert, if ever there was one, on roads and other matters in Leicestershire.
I agree wholeheartedly that the Leicester eastern distributor road is a cause of great frustration. The road has not yet been completed and the prospect of its being completed soon are not nearly as good as we would wish. The city of Leicester has developed on a fairly conventional pattern, with main radial roads feeding to business and employment areas in the centre. In recent years, the county council has developed inner and outer orbital routes to distribute traffic around the city. Both the 249 central relief road and the completed sections of the outer district distributor road have been funded with the help of 50 per cent. transport supplementary grant.
As my hon. Friend says, three quarters of the outer distributor road is now complete. Two sections remain to be completed. The A46–A47 link was accepted for TSG in 1986–87. The first western stage was completed in December 1989. The remainder of the scheme has planning permission, but orders are required for alterations to side roads and accesses and for compulsory purchase. The orders were published in March 1990 and the public inquiry was originally programmed for this summer.
Land will be acquired principally from the Leicester clinic and public open space in the control of Leicester city council. Negotiations have been proceeding with both. The city council previously showed an unwillingness to take the land out of public open space, possibly to frustrate the road scheme, although recently it apparently reluctantly agreed to support the scheme, subject to conditions. As my hon. Friend said, part of the completed first stage is not yet open to traffic and is subject to vandalism.
I am afraid to say that it is a sorry saga and an example of the worst conflicts that arise between a city and a county council which do not act together in the interests of the local citizens.
The Leicester eastern distributor road was originally planned back in the 1930s. There was land reservation for a dual carriageway and in the late 1960s Leicester city council—then the highway authority—built houses on the reservation for the second highway.
Recent traffic studies justify the need for greater traffic capacity than that provided by a single carriageway, but Leicester city council has recently resolved to reject the option that would have required extensive property demolition, in favour of a more modest improvement of an existing road.
The Government have responsibility for trunk roads and motorways and allocate resources, under the transport supplementary grant system, for local authority schemes. We often express our views on what we would like to happen, but we do not have the ability to require local authorities to take particular courses of action.
As I said in an earlier debate, mentioned by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), and as I have already told my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough in meetings, it seems totally illogical that the distributor road has not been completed, and I hope that it soon will be. Certainly, any suggestion that it cannot be completed because of the Government's reluctance to give it funding is totally mischievous. It is included in Leicestershire county council's transport planning programme for construction in 1993, 1994 and 1995, and has good economic justifications.
Obviously at the moment grant for 1993 only has been applied for. If the county council thought that it could start work in 1992, it would have put it in the programme submission that is currently under consideration. If the council still thought that it could start work in 1992, it might not be too late for it to propose an amendment to 250 the submission, although time is extremely short, because we will be announcing the final determination of the allocations in December.
Any suggestion that the Government are holding up the scheme is totally mischievous and without foundation. The Government would be pleased for the scheme to proceed and have always made it clear that it would probably qualify for transport supplementary grant.
I also refer to the A427. I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned for a long time for an improvement to that corridor; and, as he says, again that is not a direct responsibility of the Department of Transport. However, I hope that he will be pleased today—not only for himself, but for his constituents—to know that contracts 2 and 3 on the M1–A 1 link road have been awarded to Tarmac Construction. It is a two-year contract with a value approaching £36 million and is a further major investment in the roads infrastructure in Leicestershire.
That road will give tremendous relief to people living alongside the A427. Obviously, it is not as good a solution as a bypass and no doubt that will still be a priority for the local authority. However, I hope that, by getting much of the through traffic off the A427 with the M1–A 1 link, it will bring the relief that my hon. Friend seeks.
As regards the Leicester eastern bypass, that scheme was put into the roads programme in May 1989, in the "Roads for Prosperity" White Paper. Its planning and design are at a very early stage, with consultants only recently appointed to undertake initial design work. The next key event for the scheme will be a public consultation, which is planned to take place in 1993. The Leicester eastern bypass is thought to be an important strategic route, because it will bring relief to that side of Leicester and will complement the western bypass, work on which is expected to begin next year.
The A46–A6 link, which is effectively the Leicester eastern bypass, was introduced into the programme because it was thought that it would be able to provide continuity in the trunk road network for long distance north-west to south-east traffic. I know that my hon. Friend has concerns about that and about the consultants chosen after competitive tender to be responsible for its design. On the latter point, that was after a competition in which Travers Morgan One was successful. I cannot give my hon. Friend the details of exactly the amount by which it was more successful than any other tenderer. I hope that he will accept that the tendering carried out by the Department of Transport is purely objective.
It is true to say that these are the same consultants who have been advising us on the Leicester western bypass. They are highly esteemed and wholly professional. I ask my hon. Friend to accept that they will look at the scheme objectively and will take into account all the views of the local people which will be expressed during the consultation period that will precede the announcement of any preferred route. It is still possible, even now, if everybody says that they do not need the bypass after all, that the Government may withdraw it from their programme. It would be premature to take such a decision tonight.