Stourport Relief Road

Jamie Shaw working hard for Stourport and Areley Kings.

I note the carefully-worded letter about Stourport Relief Road from Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Mark Garnier in last week’s Shuttle. Its omissions suggest to us that his remarks were made purely to try to score political points, not to inform debate. For example, he did not reveal that his “Conservative transport team”, allegedly poised to construct the road, had the Conservatives won the 2005 general election, could not have included his Conservative colleagues at County Hall. The county council is the authority which would have to promote the construction of any major road to government. Alas, the Conservative-controlled county council downgraded the priority given to the relief road in 2003 : no policy or plan emanating from County Hall since then has re-instated it.

Also absent from the letter is any mention of the intentions of the Conservative-controlled district council. Its industrial land strategy, based to a significant extent on the British Sugar site, will require a major new road, linking the A451 to the A449, in order to access the entire site. This too would be a scheme which the county council would have to promote. No firm costing is yet available, but it would be a major project. A rival road construction project in Wyre Forest is surely worth a mention, if a serious debate about the relief road was intended.

We believe the purpose of Mr Garnier’s letter is to distance himself from the undeliverable claims he has made in the past, conveniently citing the economic recession which he can blame on someone else. It will be up to others, such as his Labour opponent, Nigel Knowles, to provide a constructive way forward.