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Highways Agency
1.30 pm
Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): I am pleased to have this debate, which will touch on some important issues for constituents throughout the country.
It is worth reflecting briefly on the fact that transport is an important and often overlooked part of our national life. When we get it right, it contributes to economic prosperity and social justice, helps businesses grow and flourish and helps people get to work available outside their area. It is important that we get it right as a country, because there are significant problems when we do not.
I want to cover three areas in this debate. First, I should like to review a scheme that the Highways Agency undertook in my constituency, formerly known as the Dunstable A5 queue relocation scheme. Secondly, I shall deal briefly with the work of the Highways Agency in widening the M1 and how that links with the building of the Dunstable northern bypass. Thirdly, I shall briefly touch on section 14 notices as they are put into place by the Highways Agency.
To start with, I should like to review what happened when the Highways Agency came into my constituency to undertake a scheme to relieve traffic congestion in the centre of Dunstable. Of course, it came with the best intentions. Anyone who knows Dunstable, Houghton Regis, or the surrounding villages, which suffer from rat-running, will know that the area has suffered from terrible congestion for a long time. Indeed, the first reference I found to this was an article in the Daily Mail from 1924 about the traffic bottleneck in Dunstable. My constituents are patient people who have waited a long time for relief. The instinct to do something was clearly there.
I am concerned that the Highways Agency introduced a scheme, but did not talk to local people—local councillors—who have a wealth of experience with this issue. It introduced its own scheme and told us that it was going to do it; there was no option and very little collaboration and the result has not been good. It is not just me saying that. I was so angry and upset by what happened that I asked the Public Accounts Committee to look into it.
I pay tribute to the National Audit Office, which produced a full report of some eight pages or so, looking at exactly what the Highways Agency did. It is important that lessons are learned. I think that we all accept that things go wrong in public life. We are not perfect as individuals and no Department or agency can get everything right; we understand that. However, where precious public money is involved, it is important that we learn lessons when things go wrong, so we do not repeat the same mistakes in future. I look to the Minister to give me, my constituents and people throughout the country some comfort in his reply.
I should like to go into a little detail on what happened in Dunstable. I shall quote some brief passages from the NAO report. Some £2 million was spent on the scheme—a not insignificant sum—but the NAO says, among other things, that there has been an
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increase in the number of accidents in Dunstable town centre in the first year of the scheme's operation. Air quality, which is an important consideration for people living in towns near major roads, has got worse at the Church street and West street crossroads. Unbelievably, for a scheme that was introduced to reduce congestion, the estimated total additional journey time has increased. The NAO calculates that there has been some 126,000 hours of extra queuing by motorists in the scheme's first year of operation.
The scheme was hugely over budget. The costs for preparation and design and for site supervision were 146 per cent. and 1,185 per cent. above budget respectively. There was no partnership of any description between the Highways Agency and local councils and, most worrying of all, the NAO says that despite the agency's having experienced the NAO crawling all over what happened in Dunstable, there are no plans to share the experience gained from the scheme with other agency area teams, even though the agency has undertaken similar schemes in other parts of the country, such as on the A663 in Oldham.
Next week, in the Budget, many Departments will rightly be looking for extra cash to fund important schemes and, as we all know, they will not get everything that they want. The question of value for money—only spending a budget when there is something worth while to spend it on—could not be more important. My constituents are particularly upset about that. We are being denied roads that we desperately need, on which there is nearly 100 per cent. consensus, and money has been wasted in Dunstable. I am worried, as I will explain shortly, that there will be a £10 million waste of public funds in another area.
I return briefly to the NAO report, which said there was no true partnership with local councils. The area did not build an area-wide traffic model and so was not able fully to represent the effects of rat-running, which we all know can be upsetting for urban residents. Local stakeholders told the NAO that air quality has deteriorated. There are significant concerns that the Highways Agency rated this a high-priority scheme, although it became evident fairly early on that that should not be so, and there were no moves to rank or re-evaluate the scheme when problems were identified.
The two studies undertaken by consultants brought in by the Highways Agency after the end of the project—Carillion-URS and Atkins—did not consult local councils and stakeholders directly affected by the scheme and did not comment on some of the Highways Agency's original objectives for the scheme, which is extraordinary. Most worrying of all, however, the NAO said that there were no plans to share the experience gained from the Dunstable scheme with other area teams. Following the completion of the Dunstable project, another Highways Agency scheme on the A663 in Oldham was completed on 31 March 2005, using the same technology employed in Dunstable. That says to me that we have an organisation that is not learning from its mistakes and not intending to change the way it
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operates. Although I shall listen to the Minister, perhaps this Government agency could do with a little bit more ministerial supervision and scrutiny.
Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which I applied for as well.
In general terms, my experience in working towards dualling the A47 in East Anglia has meant a great deal of frustration in dealing with the Department for Transport and the Highways Agency, and the east of England now has a board considering that. Specifically, however, to reinforce what my hon. Friend said, Norfolk county council had a major disappointment when it was enlarging and improving the Thickthorn roundabout, south of Norwich on the A11-A47. Having agreed to the scheme, the Highways Agency demanded, after it had begun, a range of additional things running to several hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is unacceptable.
Andrew Selous : I am grateful to my hon. Friend because I do not for a moment believe that what has happened in my constituency is an isolated case. I am explaining some of the public spending in my constituency, but if what has happened there is reflected around the country to the extent that my hon. Friend says it is reflected in his constituency, the sums become very serious, and that really worries me. The important issue is that roads that are desperately needed are not being built because money is being wasted and not being properly supervised.
Another massive concern for my constituents is the fact that we are looking at a six-year delay in the building of the Dunstable northern bypass, announced in the Commons in 2003 by the Minister's boss, the Secretary of State for Transport. He said that the bypass would be open to traffic in 2010–11, and that is the time plan to which the Highways Agency is working. However, we know from the regional planning panel of the East of England regional assembly that there will not be the money to build the road until 2015–16.
That worries my constituents hugely because an additional 43,000 houses are due to be built in my constituency. I hope that no one loses sight of the fact that the Dunstable northern bypass is being built to remedy an infrastructure deficit. We have been waiting for it for 80 years, but it is to deal with problems as they are now. The prospect of another 43,000 houses without that road is too bleak for any of my constituents to contemplate.
What really concerns me is a matter that came to my attention just a few weeks ago. As I understand the situation, the plans to widen the M1 will be carried out without putting in the necessary connecting junction for the Dunstable northern bypass. I understand that that will mean the loss of a £10 million saving; the cost of the bypass will therefore be £10 million more. The bypass is scheduled to cost £77 million. It is not a cheap scheme, and my worry is that that extra cost—or the lack of the saving—could delay it still further.
It seems that there is no joined-up thinking on this issue. What is the point of widening the M1 if that bypass junction, which we accept cannot be built immediately, is not put in? I hope that I have been
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misinformed and that no final decisions have been made. However, to waste £10 million, or to cause an extra £10 million to be spent to build a road that is going to be built anyway, would be extraordinary and cause me further worries about the operation of the Highways Agency.
When I was preparing for this debate yesterday evening, I was contacted unexpectedly by the North East chamber of commerce, which expressed great concern about how the Highways Agency is imposing section 14 notices. There is a lack of co-ordination between the Department for Transport and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Section 14 notices allow the Highways Agency to ban development if it thinks that the roads would not be able to cope. That is sensible; none of us wants to see roads built that are so congested that they cannot cope. However, if the ODPM is planning for major jobs growth and housing expansion and the Highways Agency at the Department for Transport is working against that, that is a concern and needs to be looked at. There are strong similarities in my own area in Bedfordshire, where a large amount of housing is planned but the roads issues are unresolved.
Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate.
In Kettering and north Northamptonshire, we are suffering from that section 14—also known as article 14—problem. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has put local authorities under a statutory duty to approve tens of thousands of new houses. The Highways Agency, as a statutory consultee, is saying, "Fine—go ahead and build the houses when planning permission is granted." However, after the permission has been granted, the agency serves the article 14 directions limiting the number of new houses that can be built.
Andrew Selous : I shall end at this point. I am grateful to my hon. Friend; his contribution is useful because we have now had examples from four parts of the country, including the north-east, where there are significant problems. That should tell the Minister that such problems are not local or particular, but of general application. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
1.45 pm
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Dr. Stephen Ladyman) : It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Bayley. This has been my first opportunity to do so since you joined the Chairmen's Panel.
I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate. I shall deal with the issues in respect of Dunstable last, after I have cleared away the others.
Article 14 notices are the Highways Agency's mechanism for gathering the information that it needs from people applying for planning permission for development. When somebody applies for planning permission, the notices are effectively the agency's only tool for saying, "We have some highways concerns and we expect them to be addressed". Such concerns are
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addressed usually by providing information, but sometimes by providing the resources to carry out a piece of work.
The article 14 notice is the Highways Agency's legal mechanism for saying, "We do not have all the information we need," or, "We are not happy with this planning proposal." There is nothing underhand about such notices; they are given very publicly. In the north-east of England, there has been a great deal of fuss about them, and it has been almost entirely unfair as far as the Highways Agency is concerned.
The developments that we are talking about are very large and would impinge greatly on the trunk road network. Before it gives the go-ahead, the Highways Agency has an absolute duty to make the developers work to provide information about what the impact of their development would be on the trunk road. In almost every case, the developer does the work after the article 14 notices have been placed. One could argue that it ought to have done that before making its planning application, but sometimes developers do not because they hope to save a bit of money.
The developers do the work and the article 14 notice is lifted. Sometimes what is required is not information, but a green travel plan that needs to be put in to minimise the impact on the trunk road network; sometimes the notice is served to stump up money for a junction improvement. However, article 14 notices are almost always lifted.
I hope that that puts the issue of article 14 notices into perspective. Such a notice may well have been used in respect of the roundabout mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson), although I am not certain about that. If he wants to give me further details about that particular scheme, I shall be happy to look into it for him.
Likewise, I suspect that there has been some misunderstanding on the part of the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) about how the article 14 notice was used on the occasion that he mentioned. A major housing development will always have an impact on the trunk road network and some work will always have to be done to understand that impact and come up with a strategy for dealing with it. I have no doubt that the article 14 notice there will be lifted when everybody understands what issues have to be addressed. However, if the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me on the matter, I shall be happy to look into it.
I turn to the issue of the A5 and M1. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire is right to say that we asked the regions for advice about their spending priorities. We do not have enough money to implement all the transport schemes that people want undertaken all at once. Usually, Ministers have to prioritise them; sitting in London, we are not very good at making priorities for regions that are many miles from our constituencies, so we have asked the regions to give us that advice.
I shall not comment on the advice that we have received in respect of the A5 and M1, because we shall make the relevant announcements shortly. However, if the road scheme that the hon. Gentleman is concerned about has been put back in the priorities, as he suggested, and if, as a result of that, we were to lose synergy with a parallel project on, for example, the M1,
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I would have to take that into consideration when I decide on the priorities. The advice is from the regions, but Ministers make the decisions. The Secretary of State and I will make the decision, and, if we find that there would be a major cost disbenefit in delaying the project, we would have to think about bringing it forward. We may decide that we have to delay it, but we would look for other ways to deal with the cost implications.
Andrew Selous : I am extremely grateful to the Minister for those comments. I accept that he cannot say more than that at present, but what he has said is reassuring and encouraging.
Dr. Ladyman : As the hon. Gentleman said, the problems of Dunstable go back a long way. According to my notes, they go back to the 1990s. I had not realised that it was the 1920s. I suspect that the solution that was envisaged in the 1920s was somewhat different from the one that we are considering today.
I begin this section of my comments by acknowledging that the Highways Agency made an error—there is no question about that. It has admitted that it made mistakes with the scheme. It engaged in a consultation and agreed objectives with the local community for resolving the congestion problems in Dunstable. It then developed a design of the scheme that would best achieve the objectives, but it changed them—not dramatically, but it did change them.
The objectives were changed in various subtle but significant ways. The agency's error was that it did not return to the local community, consult again and agree on a new plan based on the new objectives. It went ahead and designed a scheme that addressed the new objectives but did not take the local community with it. As a consequence, the local community is upset with what happened.
Andrew Selous : With the benefit of hindsight, would the Minister agree that it would have been better not to have spent the money but to have saved it and put it towards road schemes that are needed and which everyone agrees should be built?
Dr. Ladyman : I shall be honest with the hon. Gentleman and admit that I have not studied sufficiently closely the benefits of the scheme as it has been developed to be able to say whether there has been any cost benefit. The scheme may well have achieved other objectives that are, perhaps, not of interest to his constituents. It seems that the objectives were more for the benefit of the trunk road network than for Dunstable. Therefore, although the community's view may be that the money has been wasted, it is possible that there has still been a benefit for the trunk road network. I do not have an answer, but if the hon. Gentleman believes that the project has been a waste of money, that perception is truth to him. I accept that entirely.
The Highways Agency admitted that it made a mistake in the way that it consulted on the project, and it is trying to learn some lessons from it. The hon. Gentleman is right: there is a National Audit Office
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report. It is in draft form at present but is shortly to be published and put into the public domain. I have no doubt that it will deal with areas of learning that the Highways Agency needs to pick up on and ensure are more widely spread.
As a general principle, I insist that the Highways Agency tries to work as closely as possible with local communities. I also insist that it tries, wherever possible, to drive down costs and not waste public money, and to take into consideration the impact of any proposed scheme on local authority roads around the trunk road network. The agency must take communities along with it.
Thorough consultation must be the order of the day. The agency should agree objectives with the local community and then deliver those objectives. It is unacceptable for it to change the rules after a consultation and not go back to the local community. The agency will be the first to agree that that is the situation. It believes that there have been some benefits from the scheme as delivered, but it accepts that it got this project wrong and that it should have gone back to the local community for proper consultation.
If it is of any comfort to the hon. Gentleman, I can tell him that the lessons are being spread around the rest of the Highways Agency, which is now trying to work closely with local highway authorities in Bedfordshire, particularly in respect of Dunstable. It is examining the timings of traffic lights and how the scheme as it was developed can be improved. It is looking for other things that could be done to try to achieve some of the objectives that the local community set in the first place.
The agency held up its hands and admitted that it got it wrong on this occasion. It will learn from that and do what it can to try to put things right. Other than that, there is little more that I can add on behalf of the agency. If the hon. Gentleman has further concerns as the agency and the local community continue to discuss the matter, I would be happy to try to assist him with them.
Andrew Selous : I am most grateful for the general tenor of the Minister's remarks, which I appreciate very much. Before we conclude, I would be grateful if he could elaborate a little more on the mechanisms that have been put in place across the Highways Agency to try to ensure that such mistakes do not happen in the future, that lessons are learned and that precious public money is not wasted.
Dr. Ladyman : Various processes of consultation take place. To some extent, they are determined by the size and location of the scheme. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of nationally important, high-profile schemes. For example, we are doing early work to decide on new capacity for the M6 between the midlands and the north-west. We will engage in high-profile consultations with stakeholders from an early stage in the process to try to come up with design strategies that people will support. Another scheme that he will be aware of is the current consultation, which has probably been going on even longer than the one for Dunstable, to find a solution to the issues around Stonehenge. That is one level of consultation to try to find a solution. It begins at an early stage, even before design work has been done.
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With local schemes, there is active effort to engage local councils, local business representatives and Members of Parliament. I insist that the Highways Agency keeps MPs informed so that they can provide feedback. Regional development agencies and the regional assemblies are also important stakeholders in such issues. There is a wide-ranging attempt to try to agree objectives, to come up with designs that meet those objectives and then to share the designs with the local community before the agency gets to the firm planning and public inquiry stages. Of course, all those
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things increase the time that it takes to develop schemes. I often find myself facing criticism from Members that the process is taking too long, not that the consultation has not been thorough enough.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be satisfied with the assurance that we are trying to develop better ways of consulting local communities, and the admission that the agency got it wrong on this occasion and will do better next time.
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