Roads (East Sussex) (Hansard, 28 February 1996)

I am delighted to have the opportunity of initiating this debate.

There have been substantial cuts in the roads programme in recent years—a fact that is often lost on the anti-roads lobby. Even with an integrated transport policy, there is a need for sensible and necessary road schemes that improve the environment and support economic activity.

An excellent example is the A22 new route into Eastbourne, which has attracted some £25 million of Government funding. That is extremely welcome, and I was delighted to be present at the opening on 12 January of the first phase of the road. My hon. Friend the Minister for Railways and Roads will be interested to know that there was not a protester, a tree house or a tunnel in sight at the opening, because the road is welcomed by the entire local community.

The existing A22 brings a large flow of traffic, especially in the summer, through residential areas in my constituency into the centre of the town. That is dangerous and causes pollution for residents. It gives them a problem in getting out of their front drives. My constituents in Willingdon and Ratton, and especially in King's drive, will benefit from a significantly enhanced quality of life as a result of the road scheme.

The new route from Dittons to Seaside diverts traffic away from those residential areas and opens up access to business and industrial areas, and to the Sovereign Harbour marina development. Even better, the road crosses marshy land that is of little use for any other purpose. I pay tribute to Mr. Bob Wilkins, the county engineer, and his team, who have done so much work on the project. I look forward to the opening of the final phase in about two and a half years' time.

Another excellent example is the Polegate bypass. That will be of enormous environmental benefit to my constituents in Polegate, which is a major road bottleneck, especially during rush hours. A wall of stationary traffic often divides Polegate in two—traffic that does not want to be there in the first place. The fumes and other effects are especially bad in the summer months. The project has been sought after for many a long year. It is essential that the road should be finished in time for the completion of the new A22, or £25 million will have been spent on a road that leads nowhere.

The Polegate bypass is included in the list of schemes to be carried out under a design, build, finance and operate, or DBFO, scheme. That is welcome. I am grateful for the help and support of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) in pushing for an early start date on the Polegate bypass.

I believe that DBFO concessions normally involve core requirements to ensure timely delivery of new construction schemes. This scheme is fairly straightforward, and has cleared all its statutory planning procedures. There is nothing standing in its way from that point of view. The compulsory purchase order for the scheme expires on 28 September this year. As I 976 understand it, provided that notices to treat are served on landowners before that date, the statutory procedures will not have to be repeated. It would be beyond bearing if that did not happen in the relevant time scale, and we had to start the statutory procedures again.

The third scheme involves the A27 between Lewes and Polegate, and is the last vital piece in the local roads structure. The road is dualled west of Lewes, but is single-track between Lewes and Polegate. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes has lobbied long and hard for that development, and I have been happy to add my voice to his since I came into the House. Together, we brought a high-powered delegation to meet the Minister only last November to push the case for the A27.

The scheme has the support of the county council, Eastbourne borough council and Wealden district council. Only yesterday, East Sussex county council, in full session, reconfirmed its all-party support for the new A27. All significant business and industrial organisations support the scheme under the umbrella of the A27 Support Group, ably and energetically chaired by Michael Barrett. All told, it represents some 5,000 businesses in the area, with the active participation of the Eastbourne Business Partnership.

That widespread support is not surprising. First, there is the question of safety. The road is dangerous. Sussex police have recorded 141 accidents involving injury, resulting in 267 casualties; there were seven fatalities, 63 serious injuries and 197 slight injuries on the stretch to which I have referred during the five years to December 1993. Traffic flows are very heavy on the A27, which carries more than 22,000 vehicles a day. That is well within the ordinary and accepted parameters in respect of traffic flows for dual carriageways.

I am particularly indebted to Mr. Brian Stoodley, a leading local surgeon at Eastbourne district general hospital, who has taken an interest in the issue. Along with his colleagues, he has to deal all too often with the practical and unpleasant consequences of the design of the road.

On the subject of safety—as well as the efficient use of the road—it is worth pointing out that, according to one survey, in a distance of approximately 10 miles there are some 110 points of access to, or egress from, the existing road. No wonder it is both dangerous and slow.

I believe that sensible road projects of this kind have considerable environmental advantages. We are indebted to Saab, the Swedish car manufacturer, whose research has shown that a car covering a distance of 10 m, with its engine idling, in a queue of traffic—that is so often the position on the A27—will emit 57 times as many hydrocarbons and 60 times as much carbon monoxide as a car passing at 30 mph.

Not only has the south-east not done as well as other parts of the country in the lottery of road building in terms of motorways and dual carriageways; within the general picture of deprivation, East Sussex has done extremely badly, even in comparison with West Sussex. West Sussex has 48.53 miles of county roads, as opposed to 9.13 miles in East Sussex; West Sussex has 40.71 miles of trunk roads, compared with only 13.91 in East Sussex. Those are pretty depressing statistics.

One of the main reasons for the project is the impact on business. The current poor communications have a major impact on the holiday and conference trades. A number 977 of large conferences and seminars originally destined for my constituency have gone elsewhere, because of the time that it takes to get there and back. That is serious, in a town in which some 6,000 jobs and more than £100 million in revenue depend on tourism and related business each year.

I have received a mass of letters—some of which the Minister has seen—from local businesses of every description. Let me give just three serious recent examples. Only a few weeks ago, it was announced that Rhone-Poulenc-Rorer, the pharmaceuticals giant whose northern European headquarters are currently in Eastbourne, is to relocate to somewhere nearer the M25. More than 100 jobs may be affected. It gives as one of its reasons the inadequate road structure in the area.

Another example is a company called T. Cox and Son Ltd., which has been in Eastbourne for 99 years. As its director, Mr. Richard Piper, points out in a letter to the A27 support group, it is extremely sad that in our centenary year, in 1996, we will be re-locating to Tonbridge. The company employs more than 70 staff. Mr. Piper goes on to say: We have been obliged to make the decision to re-locate because we can no longer effect a timely and efficient distribution to our customers from our Eastbourne premises. In conclusion, he says: Eastbourne has so much going for it but I fear that its economic survival is being strangled because it is virtually detached by road from the rest of the country. Another company, ADM, recently calculated that it spends £150,000 a year in additional wage and fuel bills because of the slow road structures in the area. Mr. Nik Askaroff, the managing director, said in a recent letter: it is not our intention to put any more investment into Eastbourne until we see some positive action as regards the roads and the help for industry. To this end we have just opened a 7,000 sq. ft. unit in Basildon with 25 jobs which have been lost to Eastbourne. That is good news for Basildon, but bad news for my constituency.

Hon. Members may ask whether many people oppose the road scheme. As I have already said, it is the official policy of the large local authorities in the area that the road scheme should go ahead, and business organisations and other organisations are solidly in favour of it. However, a recent transport policy document put out by the East Sussex group of Liberal Democrats was stridently anti-road in its theme—it is clear that they do not support it.

One of the authors of the policy document is Councillor Norman Baker, who has a long record of opposition to the scheme. He is also the chairman of the county council economic development committee. His views on this issue are perhaps coloured by his personal interests—which I hasten to add have been declared in the usual statutory way—because the proposed route passes close to his home. As chairman of the committee, he is speaking totally at odds with the policy of his county council, reiterated as recently as yesterday.

The other authors of the pamphlet are the Liberal Democrats' parliamentary candidates for Hastings and Rye and for Eastbourne. The document talks about "providing local improvements" only on the A27. In my view, dualling is the key—nothing else matters. This document flies in the face of overwhelming local opinion 978 and of mounting evidence of job losses. It is hardly surprising that the recently leaked Liberal Democrat policy document, "Towards 1996", describes their image as "anti-road barmies".

There are people who oppose the road because they have homes, often second homes, along the proposed route. There is also the usual group of anti-road protesters who are well organised and well funded—some of whom move around the country from one project to the other and often have little knowledge of or interest in my constituency and local needs.

This programme was retained in the Government's road building programme in the budget. It was also included in a list of schemes for smaller-scale improvements. I urge the Minister for Railways and Roads to recognise that nothing less than dualling will do with respect to the A27. Let the design work on the scheme proceed, taking into account all reasonable objections on environmental grounds, so that my constituents and those who live nearby can have a vital road link that is built in harmony with the countryside.

§ The Minister for Railways and Roads (Mr. John Watts)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) for raising this topic this evening. It is refreshing to have heard from him a balanced account of the importance that roads can have—an account grounded in the real needs of a community, its people and businesses.

On our plans for the road network in East Sussex and the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend, we must balance transport benefits against their environmental cost. An equally important concern is the balance between the number of good transport investments that we are called on to support and their affordability.

Frankly, we cannot afford to support anything like the number of good, worthwhile projects available, if we are to continue to control our expenditure. Our review of the motorway and trunk road programme announced in November sought to ensure that we were committed to the most effective overall programme achievable, in the light of the resources available to Government in the next few years.

Before talking about individual road schemes, it may be worth saying something about roads for the county as a whole. My hon. Friend will recognise that East Sussex is served by a trunk road box. The M25, although not in East Sussex itself, provides for strategic east-west movements to the north of the county. It is also, of course, the point of access to the strategic motorway network as a whole.

To the south of the county is the A27/A259 south coast trunk route. The importance of that link to the economies of Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings and other towns is not disputed, and there is little that I would want to add to what my hon. Friend has already said about the importance of those links. The trunk road network is extended south of the A27 by the A26 to Newhaven.

The M25 and the south coast trunk route are linked by two trunk roads to the west and east of the county—the A23 to Brighton and the A21 to Hastings.

We have proposals in the future programme for all those roads except the A26. We announced last year our intention to widen the busiest section of the M25—the section between the M3 and the M40—to five and six-lane dual carriageway.

979 For the A23, we still have one scheme in our long-term programme, but we have in fact already implemented most of our proposals for the A23, with a programme of schemes costing about £85 million. Regular users of the A23 will be well acquainted with the improvements that have been achieved on the route in the past five years.

On the A21, I was pleased to be able to announce in the November review that two schemes would form part of a package to be built under the private finance initiative. Those are the Tonbridge to Pembury improvement and the much-needed, long-awaited Lamberhurst bypass.

Again, those schemes are not in East Sussex—they are in Kent—but they are on the Hastings link to the M25, and that is a key reason why we have sought to ensure that those improvements are provided as soon as possible. They will be built under what we call design, build, finance and operate arrangements—DBFO for short—in which a single contractor finances and constructs road improvements. He then maintains and operates the road for a 30-year period.

The DBFO package for Kent and East Sussex does, of course, extend beyond the A21; it includes the construction of the A27 Polegate bypass in my hon. Friend's constituency, and he has asked about timing.

The Highways Agency is aiming to award a contract for the project in the 1997–98 financial year. Construction should start shortly after the contract is awarded. All DBFO contracts have an incentive for the contractor to get on with construction as early as he possibly can. As I explained to my hon. Friend in my recent letter, the agency is aware that the compulsory purchase order for the Polegate bypass expires in September. It will therefore serve notices to treat before the expiry date. That is sufficient to ensure that the order is valid and that the statutory procedures will not need to be repeated.

On the proposed Lewes to Polegate improvement, my hon. Friends the Members for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) and for Eastbourne came to see me about this scheme in November and made the case for its importance. The A27 between Lewes and Polegate is a single carriageway with poor alignment. It is common to see long queues trailing behind slow-moving vehicles and even farm traffic. Conditions of that sort inevitably lead to the sort of safety problems that my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne explained, and to unpredictable journey times.

I have also received strong representations from people who are uneasy about the effect of the published scheme. I would add that the total cost of the proposed scheme was estimated at about £82 million, making it one of the most expensive schemes in the programme. Given that those difficulties exist, we need to be very clear that we 980 are striking the right balance between the need for improvements, environmental protection and overall cost. For that reason, I have asked the Highways Agency to review the scheme to see what the effects of smaller-scale improvements would be.

I am reluctant to anticipate the outcome of the review. In particular, my hon. Friend asked about a continuing commitment to dualling. Without anticipating the results of the review, there is a strong prima facie case for providing a dual carriageway for most, and indeed probably all, of that section of road. But we must have a look at the detail before we can make a firm decision.

If there were an option for single carriageway for some or all of the route, I would want to know the answers to various questions. What would it cost? What would it achieve? What would be the additional cost of a dualling option? What extra benefits would dualling realise? What is the difference in the environmental impact? Those are exactly the type of questions on which I am looking to the agency for advice.

I would add now that, since the existing scheme covers more than 10 miles of road, there may also be phasing options that are worth considering, which might make the scheme more affordable. But I do not want to prejudge the outcome of the review. For tonight, I wish to assure my hon. Friend that we do not intend to walk away from the problem.

I have confined my response to trunk roads, but before closing I must acknowledge my hon. Friend's words about the A22 improvement, which we have funded through the transport supplementary grant at a cost of more than £30 million. I agree that that was a much-needed scheme for Eastbourne, with real economic benefits, and I am grateful that my hon. Friend has mentioned it tonight.

The overall message that I wish to give my hon. Friend to take to his constituents is that I understand the concerns about roads in Sussex. I could not do otherwise, given the continual pressure to which I am subjected—in a most welcome way—by my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne and for Lewes. I understand the frustration that people must feel that we are unable to do more, more quickly. The decision to include the A27 scheme in DBFO was taken because that is the quickest way that we can deliver the benefits of that scheme, which are, of course, also related to the benefits from the A22 improvement.

We have tried to take account of the needs in our review and in the difficult choices that we have had to make in recent months. I hope that, as the programme unfolds, we will be able to deliver the sort of road infrastructure that industry in the area desperately needs, and to provide the environmental benefits and congestion relief that will be of great benefit to my hon. Friend's residential constituents.