SUPPORTERS of the Western Bypass have suffered a double setback in their bid to press ahead with a Heysham to M6 road link.

An important report of key economic and transport issues in the North West doesn't even mention the Western Bypass.

And local environment campaigners have seized on a report from West Berkshire which suggest the eight-month old Newbury Bypass, scene of the biggest anti-road protest ever seen in this country, has had only a marginal effect on traffic congestion.

A Government quango, the North West Development Agency, has just produced a regional economic strategy for the North West but the M6 to Heysham road link, promoted by our local economic and political leaders, has been omitted. Said Jonathan Sear of Friends of the Earth: "The Western Bypass hasn't even made the starting blocks despite the county council spending tens of thousands of pounds promoting it. If it can't even get a mention in the regional economic strategy then it's got no chance of being built. They should put their money and energy into a transport strategy for the district which has a chance of becoming a reality. Heysham has a rail link just waiting to be developed."

This week a West Berkshire Council report described the Newbury Bypass, which cost £74 million to build and £26 million to police, as creating "no consistent pattern of traffic change over the Newbury network as a whole."

Peak time traffic has been reduced by just 25 per cent and town centre congestion is still very bad.

Mr Sear added: "The very same thing would happen if the Western Bypass was built. We'd end up destroying beautiful countryside and spending nearly £100 million just to get a small drop in levels which, a few years later, would be just as bad."

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