Archived press release

Leaked Document Shows Massive Cuts to Roads Programme

24 November 1996

The leaked documents also show:

* the surviving roads programme will still take about 30 years to complete [3];

* many schemes remaining in the Programme are considered necessary to relieve congestion created by previous road-building [4];

* Government plans for private road-building, such as at Salisbury, will cost more than if the same roads had been built in a conventional manner [5];

Roger Higman, Senior Transport Campaigner of Friends of the Earth said:

"These documents show that the roads programme cannot solve congestion problems and that private road-building is making matters worse. The Government must support the Road Traffic Reduction Bill and take urgent steps to prevent traffic growth if we are to avoid gridlock"

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] The leaked document, titled "Ranking the Roads Programme", is a memo from Mr Hugh Wenban-Smith of the national roads division to Infrastructure Minister, Mr John Watts and the Secretary of State for Transport, Sir George Young. It is copied to Mr John Bowis, Minister of Transport for London; Sir Patrick Brown, Permanent Secretary of the DOT and Mr Lawrie Haynes, Chief Executive of the Highways Agency amongst others.

"Ranking the Roads Programme", dated 7 November, 1996, says that the forthcoming public spending announcement "does not allow us to keep the longer term programme ... Ministers have decided .... to continue with a roads programme which is the size of the current main programme" (para 2). It lists 95 schemes from the longer term programme as "unreprieved" (Table 3) and gives Ministers options for £1.37 billion of cuts from the remaining 96-103 schemes (depending on which options are chosen) (para 8). The final decision on which schemes are cut is left to Ministers.

[2] "Ranking the Roads Programme" says of last year's roads review which cut 77 schemes from the roads programme, that "we took great pains to issue the results on Budget Day, and with considerable success: the Department as such was not blamed for the very substantial cut-back. Officials propose that we should deal with this year's announcements the same way" (para 18).

[3] "Ranking the Roads Programme" says "As part of this year's PES settlement,Treasury agreed that there would be a statement to confirm that the Government's policy is to make steady progress in implementing a roads programme the size of the current main programme. ....On this basis, the main programme .... would take about 30 years to complete, which would be too long to be defensible....To bring the estimated time to complete the programme down to 15 years would require additional longer term PES provision of some £250 m per annum assuming conventional funding" (paras 10-11)

[4] "Ranking the Roads Programme" lists 21 schemes from the longer-term programme that are suggested for reprieve (Annex). Many are considered necessary because of traffic generated or congestion caused by previous road plans. For example:

M1 Jn 21 - "an urgent and severe problem of traffic queuing onto the motorway is developing brought about by completion of the A46 Leicester Western Bypass and local development sites"
A 5 Weeford-Fazeley "will relieve an already congested junction with the A38, which will only become worse once BNRR opens"
M62 J18-21 "busy section of motorway ... which will become more congested following completion of M66"

[5] "Ranking the Roads Programme" contains numerous statements suggesting Government plans for private "Design, Build, Finance and Operate" road projects will prove more expensive than if roads were built through conventional public funding, eg: "if more schemes were taken forward as DBFOs, it would take longer because DBFOs require additional funding in interest and VAT payments" (para 11)

"Additional DBFOs would add to these figures" (para 12)

Yet plans for new DBFOs have been excluded from the Government's review (and therefore kept in the Programme), even though contracts on many have yet to be let (para 3).
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