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A14/A45 (North Northamptonshire)

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs. Anderson, and I thank Mr. Speaker for granting me this debate. He has been generous in providing a series of debates on the expansion of north Northamptonshire to both me and my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone). I thank the Minister for his attendance, and I hope that this debate will be constructive and that he will be able to provide answers to my questions and concerns. I look forward to his response. I also thank my hon. Friend for attending. He will try to catch your eye, Mrs. Anderson, later in the debate. He works tirelessly on behalf of his constituents and, like me, he has grave concerns about the road infrastructure in north Northamptonshire. The A45 and A14 are east-to-west trunk roads passing through or near Wellingborough. My constituents must use one or both roads to get about in their daily lives, and they are both extremely busy. The A45 and A14 trunk roads feed into the M1 and are the main links through the constituency to the east of England. They are extremely well used, extremely busy and extremely underfunded. It seems that things are set to become much worse for my constituents who use those roads. The Government are forcing 52,000 new homes on north Northamptonshire in the next few years as part of the south midlands and Milton Keynes spatial core strategy. That equates with about a 50 per cent. rise in the number of existing homes. Moreover, plans for two large developments in my constituency—Wellingborough East and Wellingborough North—have already been submitted to the planning authority. They will not happen in the future; that huge increase in development is happening now, but where are the plans for the infrastructure to support it? Who knows? That is what I am trying to find out. The fact is that there are no plans to improve capacity or to carry out major and necessary improvements to the A45 and the A14 in time for the increased development, increase in population and increase in the number of vehicles. What is even more worrying is that it is not just our roads that will fall behind; it is our local public services, which are already stretched to the limit with the current population. In Welllingborough we have no hospital, a demolished secondary school and no available NHS dentist. Let us consider one issue—the hospital. One might ask what that has to do with the road infrastructure. As there is no hospital in Wellingborough, my constituents must travel by car or, in an emergency, by ambulance to Kettering or Northampton general hospitals. If they go to Kettering, they must use the A14; if they go to Northampton, they must use the A45. When those roads are congested or blocked my constituents' journey time to hospital could be severely delayed, which in turn could be life threatening. I have argued strongly that there is a moral and financial case for a hospital in the Wellingborough and Rushden area. If we had such a hospital, at a stroke thousands and thousands of car journeys along the A14 and A45 every year would not be necessary. If there were any joined-up government thinking, there would be a plan for a hospital in the Wellingborough and Rushden area—but of course, there is not. Today, the Institute for Public Policy Research report confirms that outside London, Northamptonshire has seen the largest influx of workers from eastern Europe. Even more worrying is that we have been told that a third of the new development will be used by migrant families from eastern Europe. I run a rolling survey in my constituency as part of the ““Listening to Wellingborough and Rushden”” campaign, which lets me know regularly what is of most concern to my constituents. For the first time ever, the latest survey shows that immigration is local residents' No. 1 concern. A year ago, that was not an issue, and did not even register. It is now a concern because of the huge impact on public services, including our major roads, which cannot cope with the amount of new development and increase in population. There was a recent borough council by-election in the Redwell ward, which adjoins the proposed Wellingborough North development. It is a safe Conservative ward and the Conservatives easily retained it. However, for the first time, a British National party candidate stood, and he stood on the issue of overdevelopment and lack of infrastructure, including the state of our roads. He received more than 15 per cent. of the vote and beat Labour into third place. That should be a wake-up call for all mainstream politicians in north Northamptonshire. Before I talk about specific housing developments in the very near future, I want to relate how overcrowding on the A14 and A45 creates not only long delays and frustrations for those who must use them, but the more serious effects of underfunding our roads: casualties and accidents. In 2004, there were five fatal casualties on the A14 and one on the A45. By 2006, the numbers had risen to eight fatal casualties on each road. Since 2004, the number of fatal, serious and slight casualties on the A45 has risen dramatically. In 2004 the total number of casualties was 96. In 2006, it was 194. The casualty reduction target set by the Highways Agency for the number of casualties on the A45 in 2006 was 149. The actual number of casualties was 194. That is about a third more than expected. Something must be seriously wrong if targets are being missed by such a large proportion. That was the situation in 2006, before the extra development took place. The A14 and A45 trunk roads are part of the Highways Agency's area 88. Within that area it also manages the A1, A421, A428, A5 and A43. The total number of casualties on all those roads in 2006 was 907, of which 447—almost half of all casualties in that year—happened on the A14 and the A45. Again, it does not take a rocket scientist to realise that accidents and casualties on those two trunk roads are too frequent and too many. The reason is lack of planned infrastructure and lack of funding to improve those roads. One issue on which I have campaigned at Westminster and in my constituency is the lack of improvements to the Chowns Mill roundabout at the A45/A6 junction at Higham Ferrers. The ““Listening to Wellingborough and Rushden”” campaign demonstrates what is wrong with the system. Chowns Mill interchange is a roundabout designed for 4 roads. It now has five roads going into it. A grade-separated junction is desperately needed at Chowns Mill to alleviate the enormous congestion caused by the short-sighted and inappropriate layout. There have also been a number of accidents and casualties at Chowns Mill because, although small improvements have been made, they have been so minor and confusing that drivers are still unsure about which lanes to use. I used that roundabout recently and was in the right lane to head forward when a car shot straight across me. I do not believe that that was a bad driver; I just think he was confused by the road layout. The campaign for improvements to Chowns Mill roundabout has been led by my constituent Mrs. Julie Nacca, who had an accident on the site. She was so incensed by not being able to get anything done to improve the roundabout that she started her own petition. I presented that petition to Parliament in March 2007. I would like to praise Mrs. Nacca's hard work and dedication in raising the matter with the relevant organisations and in trying to get improvements from which everyone can benefit. The campaign has resulted in a meeting between the parish, district and county councils, the Highways Agency and me. It was universally agreed that improvements should be made, but then things went horribly wrong. The decision was made by an unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable quango: the East Midlands regional assembly. The assembly is a regional organisation based in Leicestershire. It might vaguely know where Wellingborough is, but certainly would not know where Higham Ferrers is and would have no idea of the problems at Chowns Mill. The assembly refuses to make the improvements at Chowns Mill a priority and does not put it in its forward plan, which covers the next 15 years. Mrs. Nacca, Councillor Derek Lawson, who has also been campaigning on the issue, and myself met the chief executive of the East Midlands regional assembly at the end of last year. We were told that these desperately needed improvements to our road system would not be carried out, regardless of the amount of new development, the numbers of new businesses and the increase in new vehicles that would soon be on the A45. We were told that there was no chance of the grade-separated junction being put into the programme. Two new major developments planned for Wellingborough in the immediate future are Wellingborough East and Wellingborough North, which includes Upper Redhill and Pulse Park. Some 3,200 houses have already been approved for Wellingborough East—or WEAST as it is more commonly known—and more than 3,000 homes are planned for Wellingborough North. Moreover, plans will shortly be submitted for a new development east of WEAST, which will include thousands of new homes and will create a new urban conurbation. Where does that development lie? Right on the A45. It is my understanding that the Highways Agency does not have any proposals for major improvements to the A45 between the M1 and the A14 in the next 15 years. I would be interested to learn whether the Minister has any updated, more encouraging information on that. The Wellingborough North development, for which there are two planning applications at the moment, will cover more than 3,000 new homes that will be linked by the A509 directly to the A14. That will mean more houses, more people and more traffic for the A14. It is clear that the Government have a blinkered approach; they have tunnel vision and can only see houses. They are determined to build thousands and thousands of new homes in north Northamptonshire. Those homes are already being built, yet the Government have no serious, structured or firm plans for improving the road infrastructure. If they were to take their blinkers off, they would realise that the A14 and the A45 are heading for complete gridlock.