THE new Highways Agency boss for the North West, Kevin Lansbury, may find he has blown the dust off an old controversy when he pledges to re-open discussions about extending the M65 motorway from Colne to Yorkshire.

For this was a scheme so mired in dispute in Pendle that, after years of opposition from anti-motorway campaigners, Lancashire County Council even scrapped the route it had earmarked for a dual-carriageway road to Airedale.

But if that was a victory for the vociferous "greens," since then they have been mighty quiet about the consequences - those of the environmental nightmare of noise, congestion and pollution suffered by the people of Colne and communities along the A56 as a result of "Yorkshire" traffic pouring off and on to the M65 at its eastern end.

All that the affected residents can currently hope for - having been befriended in this disagreeable way by Friends of the Earth's and Pendle Council's prevailing against M65 traffic being steered on the proposed South Valley route past Colne - is relief in the form of the Foulridge-Earby by-pass scheme.

But this is at least three years away and dependent on the private sector coming forward with finance for it.

Yet, if it remains debatable whether Pendle has lost economic investment as a result of the rejection of the M65's eastern extension, what is certain is that the ensuing chaos at Colne was predictable and that it would worsen once the motorway was linked in the west to the M6 and M61.

The "antis" took a mental detour to avoid this eventuality.

Mr Lansbury is right to revive the issue - even at a time when the government seems committed to reducing road provision in the dubious belief that traffic will be discouraged.

For Colne's nightmare has to be resolved and the question has to be faced of whether the Foulridge-Earby by-pass will only shove the problems now existing at the end of the M65 on to the already-strained A59 route to Yorkshire.

The whole issue - strategic, economic and environmental - of improved trans-Pennine road communications north of the M62 needs urgent objective examination.

And it must be devoid of the instinctive anti-roads "green" bias.

For that knee-jerk prejudice is much to blame for the nightmare that Colne and nearby communities now suffer.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.