Hawes opens another stop
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by Kathy Watson • Battling truckstop proprietor Jenny Hawes is set for another showdown with the Department of Transport after setting up shop again in Cambridgeshire.
She opened for business last week from a portable building in a layby on the A47 two miles west of Wisbech. Hawes says the site was unofficially offered to her by Depart-ment of Transport officials last year to persuade her to move. Her occupation of the site is supported by local MPs and transport minister Robert Key, who said he had no objection, says Hawes.
Hawes' husband Peter hit the headlines last year when he spent six months welded inside her previous roadside cafe, just down the road at Guyhirn. He was protesting against a DOT proposal to remove the site which it claimed was an accident blackspot.
Despite a warm welcome from truckers, the new site has not found favour with the DOT. A spokesman said: "they have damaged the layby and we are talking to our legal advisors".
Jenny Hawes is also taking legal advice in a battle for compensation for her former site. It had been used as a layby truckstop for 20 years and rates had been levied for most of that time.
She is also angry that Fenland District Council did not take up her offer to buy land on an alternative site in Cromwell Road, Wisbech, for a new truckstop.