Midlands to get roads for recove
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THE GOVERNMENT'S first priority is towards roads which will aid economic recovery, according to Junior Transport Minister Kenneth Clarke.
Addressing the Midlands regional annual consultative cornmittee last week, he said that it was an inescapable fact that in recent years the Midlands had not been receiving its share of the national road-building cake.
Mr Clarke said that the Roads White Paper shows that the Government is now redressing the balance. Because so many of the Midlands' schemes meet "our first priority", no less than E250m worth of schemes are now in the Government's main programme to be started be tween now and the end of 1983, claims Mr Clarke.
"When this programme is finished we shall have completed the southern orbital route around Birmingham and improved the route from its junction with the M6 towards Nottingham, linked Telford to the national motorway network, and improved communications with Bristol and the South-west.
"These are only the main achievements. The full programme also contains a number of small schemes — both relief roads in major cities and bypasses which will bring significant economic and environmental benefits."
The main programme from 1984 onwards includes the M40; A42 Castle Donnington section of the Birmingham to Nottingham route; completion of the Stoke to Derby link; plus bypasses for Market Harborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Evesham and Oswestry.
"I believe that the importance of the Midlands both as an industrial base in its own right and as the hub of the national highways network is fully recognised in our road programmercontin-, ued Mr Clarke.