Progress to bypass the North East

Feb 9 2008 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal

In a vital planning blueprint, the Government has watered down – and sought to eliminate – some of the North East’s transport ambitions. Regional Affairs Correspondent Adrian Pearson reports.

EVERY new house, road and business will be ruled by it for the next decade and more, but the Regional Spatial Strategy has so far served only to create conflict in the North East.

The RSS forms the masterplan against which every major decision in the region will be judged up to and beyond 2021.

It states where the best sites are for a business park, what roads we should ignore when allocating transport spending and exactly how many new homes can be built in a village.

Even the amount of rubbish that households have to recycle will be governed by the RSS.

As planners discuss the latest version, top of their list of much-needed changes will be transport priorities.

Early versions of the RSS, produced by the North East Assembly, insisted that any blueprint for growth must recognise the region’s desperate transport concerns.

Assembly planners originally sent the Government a wish list of road and rail improvements they considered crucial to the region’s success.

Dualling of the A1 was high on this list, as was the need to free up the congestion-hit western bypass.

A forward-thinking assembly wanted the Government to be bold and back a future high speed rail system passing through Newcastle.

Sadly, the Government had a different idea and has written to the assembly to say it was again changing large parts of the RSS because “the North East does not suffer as severely from as many transport problems as other regions in the country, for example, congestion in the South East”.

Opponents of the RSS, and they are many and varied, say the Government and the assembly have between them decided with a pen stroke whether, for example, South Tyneside deserves a job-creating business park – it apparently doesn’t – or whether the MetroCentre should be allowed to expand for new businesses – it shouldn’t.

As the assembly’s chief planner Phil Jones told The Journal this week: “The Government has again watered down the region’s transport ambitions.”

Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland, a committed campaigner for better roads in the region, said the Government had struck out large parts of the strategy’s transport aspirations because it could not afford to pay for them.

He said: “We need to be ambitious, but we are up against a transport department that has overspent in other areas and cannot afford to back many schemes.

“I am arguing with them that the North East should be considered a special case, because without these aims being achieved we will continue to be denied the chance to grow. It is important a document like this recognises that.”

And while road and rail take the brunt of the criticism – with the transport section receiving no support in the last consultation – housing figures will again cause headaches for anyone hoping to live outside the North’s ever-expanding city regions.

Arguing that too many houses are somehow a danger to the economy, the assembly and the Government have agreed on fewer than 100 new homes for part of Northumberland. For example, despite Government plans to see three million homes built nationwide by 2020, Alnwick can build just 95 a year.

And a decade from now, builders in Berwick will be competing to build just 85 homes a year.

The Government has already backed down a little in the long-running housing argument and decided to allow council planners to put forward extra homes if they can justify them.

Berwick MP Alan Beith said the housing targets were “absurd” and has written to council planners advising them of the Government’s latest position.

“I received an answer to a parliamentary question in which the Government said its push to create new houses could be a special circumstance upon which the housing targets could be scrapped, and that each council will have to decide on this itself.

“These ridiculous housing limits are akin to the story of King Canute, with Government planners standing there ordering the housing market not to grow.

“I know of other Labour MPs who have compared the RSS to a piece of Stalinist planning policy.” Chair of the North East Assembly Coun Alex Watson has urged local people to take part in the latest consultation.

“Patterns of development affect every aspect of our lives, from the places where we live and work and the way we travel around, to the way we maintain the natural assets that surround us.”

The document is out for consultation, and anyone wishing to comment should contact the Regional Strategy Team at the Government Office for the North East on (0191) 202-3528 or by email at strategy@gone.gsi.gov.uk

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