New hope over Durham Tees Valley Airport road
17.02.06
Highway Agency bosses have been ordered to start preparing detailed assessments of how their controversial policies are affecting the North-east. Demands for written explanations were delivered by a powerful parliamentary inquiry, which heard that North-east development projects including the expansion of Durham Tees Valley Airport - had been hit by the agency's actions.
The Highway Agency has used Article 14 notices to stop schemes, which it says will put more traffic on major roads across the North-east. The use of such notices was strenuously defended by the agency's chief executive Archie Robertson. He told the Commons Transport Committee that the notices were needed to achieve sensible traffic planning decisions.
That was a view fiercely challenged by a North-east MP, who warned thousands of jobs were being put at risk by repeated obstruction of vital regional projects. The Labour backbencher Dave Clelland complained that among the targets of this policy were the £20m expansion plans for Durham Tees Valley airport involving some 1800 jobs.
The agency is demanding that a second road impact study for a longer stretch of the A66 is commissioned by the airport's owners. Mr Clelland challenged Mr Robertson to justify this and other decisions, which he said were harming efforts to narrow the North-South jobs divide and bring North-east employment rates closer to the national average.
But Committee chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody demanded that the Highway Agency send her a detailed written assessment of the use of Article 14 notices and their impact on the North-east.
The news was greeted with delight by Andrew Sugden, policy director of the North East Chamber of Commerce. 'Let's hope that this adds clarity for developers and forces the Highways Agency to think twice before issuing any further notices,' he said.
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