Highways Agency blasted over bypass ‘death’

THEY thought it was all over . . .but it isn’t yet.

Tameside Council is to tell residents of Longdendale that relief is at hand after a letter to every home from the Highways Agency suggested that hopes for the Mottram bypass were dead.

The Chronicle revealed in March that the controversial bypass was set to be resurrected just days after the Agency — which spent £20m promoting and researching the plans — pulled out of a £16m public inquiry into the relief road through the Peak National Park to the Woodhead Pass.

But the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) agreed to resurrect a cheaper version for a third of the cost of the £315m scheme as part of its “plan B” after losing the congestion charge referendum last December.

Now, however, the Agency has written to householders explaining that the inquiry has been cancelled and so had the scheme.

At a meeting of AGMA, Tameside Council boss Roy Oldham told his fellow leaders: “The Highways Agency is the body which has caused all the trouble by their incompetence. Now they have sent this letter which puts everybody into a cul-de-sac.

“We want to get on with it and start work in 2011 but this letter does not mention the smaller scheme at all.

“I just can’t think badly enough about the Highways Agency and the way they have acted in this matter.”