Secretary of State listens to residents about bypass
Residents from Nunthorpe spoke with the Transport Secretary Patrick Mcloughlin about transport issues around the South of the Town including the East Middlesbrough bypass.
Mr McLoughlin met residents and local councillors at the Avenue Primary School Nunthorpe on a December evening to hear how the Middlesbrough bypass – and rail electrification which would allow the removal of 1970’s Pacer trains – would benefit thousands of people on Teesside. This after direct rail routes between Middlesbrough and London’s King s Cross were given the go-ahead by the government last week as well as new projects to improve the A19 and A1(M) on top of ongoing projects such as the widening of the Parkway/A19 junction.
Mr Mcloughlin was invited to Nunthorpe by Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland, Will Goodhand.
Will commented
“I was very pleased to be able to invite Patrick to listen to local people about transport projects which are needed in our area,” Will said.
“Some of these schemes and proposals have been on hold for years, such as the Middlesbrough bypass, we need to push ahead with them.
“Once complete, these projects would be of huge social and economic benefit to hardworking people and their families across this area. I’m delighted Patrick agreed to come along today and listen to our case.
“I will continue to work and push my colleagues in Government to ensure that when it is their responsibility to act they do so. But I must stress this very important point. We cannot continually tell each other that London is out of touch with the North and yet continually ask them to interfere with local decision making. We must ensure that our local politics can carry public opinion with it and many of the changes that we need to make across Teesside have to be made at a local level, be it wind-farms, housing plans, or cases like the Middlesbrough bypass which depends on our local authorities working together. I will continue to press our local politicians to sort their acts out, they have been able to get away with blaming others every-time anything goes wrong and we need to make sure that they are held accountable for their misjudgements when they occur.”