Rival cafe gets go-ahead
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• A truckstop proprietor who has spent five months barricaded in his own roadside cafe, in protest at planners' moves to shut his site on safety grounds, has been dealt another blow.
His local council has given conditional planning permission for a rival cafe to open just 10km (six miles) up the road.
Peter Hawes is demanding an alternative site or compensation following the Department of
Transport's decision to close the layby on which his cafe was sited on the A47 at Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire (CM 6-12 May).
The DOT says the layby was closed because it was an accident blackspot, and it is not its duty to find Hawes an alternative.
Hawes' wife Jenny says the other prospective truckstop owner only agreed to service truck drivers because it was a condition of the site getting the go-ahead. The owner of the site, who runs a garden centre, declines to comment.
The new truckstop near Wisbech is expected to have a drivers' cafe and parking space for 78 trucks.
Fenland District Council has given it planning permission on condition that its right turning lane is suitable.