Transport in the South-East

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

My hon. Friend has shown me the photos of what has happened in her constituency, and I share her distress that a main road—an A road—has literally fallen into the sea. Our constituencies share the fact that we are low-lying coastal plains at the forefront of climate change. As we see more storm events, we are seeing the damage in our communities.

That brings me on to paying particular tribute to my residents living on the Manhood peninsula, who get completely trapped in the summer months because of congestion on the roads and are unable to get out of the area. Today, they are trapped because all the roads in and out of the Manhood are completely flooded. Georgia, a constituent of mine, left her job as a nurse because her commute was taking two hours, with one hour spent travelling just the handful of miles from Emsworth to Tangmere. Chris’s son has school transport, and has to leave an hour before school starts due to the traffic on the A259 on to the A27; again, he is only travelling a small number of miles.

Melanie is planning on packing up her successful mental health business because the gridlock is, perhaps ironically, negatively affecting her mental health. Shaun owns a funeral company, and he told me of the time he had to get out of the hearse to physically clear the traffic to get to the local crematorium on time. Daniel owns a home carers company, and he regularly reports that staff get stuck on the A27, which means that the people they care for in the community miss medicine times and hospital appointments, and the backlog means that people get seen later and later in the day.

I am in no doubt that the congestion on the A27 is strangling the city and putting off investment from businesses. It is stopping people shopping in the city or business parks and is impacting people’s daily lives. The A27 Chichester improvement scheme has a long history dating back to the 2000 south coast multi-modal study. Following several iterations, the scheme was included in the 2013 “Investing in Britain’s Future” White Paper and the 2014 road investment strategy. The scheme went to consultation in 2016, when 93% of respondents to a National Highways survey said that congestion was a problem on the A27.

However, in 2017 the Secretary of State removed the funding for any improvements along the Chichester stretch. There remains significant anger and frustration among residents that they were never given the opportunity to vote on a preferred model of road improvements, especially as the Chichester district has seen more than its fair share of house building over the past decade. If the Government expect areas such as ours to continue to sustain such an increased level of development, residents need to see the investment in infrastructure too. Instead, it seems that their local services, be it GPs, schools, roads or buses, are expected to manage the additional capacity with no extra resource.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for securing the debate and for the great speech she is making. She mentioned the role of buses. There tends to be an assumption made by people outside the south-east that we all have bus networks similar to those in London, but they would not have to go very far from London—to my constituency of Dartford, for instance—to find that the bus services become extremely limited, yet bus services can be such a driver of a better quality of life for people in getting to education and work or accessing other opportunities. Does the hon. Member agree that the extra money that the Government have given to county councils—in my instance, Kent county council has been given an extra £42 million to spend in the coming year on improved bus services—must be spent to provide better connectivity for all our residents, irrespective of whether they are in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire or other parts of the south-east?

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

That intervention tested my legendary patience to its very limits, so just bear that in mind in the future.