Roadworks: Cheshire

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of roadworks on communities in Cheshire.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I am grateful to you and to the House for granting me this opportunity at short notice. I particularly thank the Minister for being here as well; I know that she has an incredibly busy schedule as well as a terrible inheritance from the previous Government, which she is trying to fix.

In my constituency of Macclesfield and elsewhere in Cheshire, we rely on our road network day in, day out, and it should be stable, dependable and free flowing. Over the past year, that network has become a source of constant frustration: what should be routine journeys have turned into a daily ordeal and a monotonous misery. Week in and week out, I find myself fighting to get basic roadworks resolved. I cannot quite believe that one year on in one place and six months on in another, the works are still unresolved—one year of disruption, one year of misery. That is what brings me here today. The two specific cases I want to highlight are the closure of the B5470 in Rainow and the traffic lights at the A523 Mill House bridge in Adlington.

The Mill House bridge sits on the A523, which is the main road in and out of Macclesfield. It is regularly used by people heading to Manchester, Poynton, Adlington and the north—or pretty much anywhere, including Leek and Stoke to the south. The importance of that road simply cannot be overstated to residents across swathes of Cheshire. A full year ago, part of the bridge collapsed, meaning that two-way traffic was unsafe. The council acted properly, putting in place temporary traffic lights to restrict the flow of traffic to one lane at a time.

Since then, to be frank, insufficient progress has been made by Ringway Jacobs, the main contractor for the council. When it comes to the delays, it has talked about the complexity of a nearby gas main and confusion over who is responsible for part of the repair. But the delays are simply unacceptable. In January, works beneath the bridge finally began, after much urging from me, but that was eight months after the traffic lights had been installed. Those works are scheduled to be completed in early summer, which basically begins next week.

I probably do not need to tell you, Sir Desmond, that confidence among my constituents that the issue will be resolved in a few weeks’ time is very low because too little has happened too slowly and with insufficient communication. Expected completion dates keep getting pushed back and back with no accountability, sincere apology or explanation.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Back home, we have had the very problems that the hon. Gentleman refers to, but those doing the roadworks have found a different way of responding to exceptional circumstances. The Sydenham bypass in east Belfast in Northern Ireland is a main thoroughfare for traffic. It was closed down for the Saturday and Sunday and contractors worked solidly for those 48 hours to get the work done. It was then reopened on the Monday morning so that the commuter traffic could continue. In my constituency of Strangford, the Portaferry road was closed from 7 pm to 7 am so that all the work could be done at night; the next morning, the traffic was able to go about its business. I mention that by way of being helpful to the hon. Gentleman. Is that something that the road service in his constituency has considered?

[Tim Roca]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the point. Constituents mention the issue of night time works to me, but perhaps I will let the Minister comment on that in a little more detail. In Cheshire, we are really lucky to be on the fast track for devolution, which is opposed by local Conservatives. Hopefully, when we get more powers and more money from central Government, we will be able to consider such things in Cheshire ourselves.

There has been too little regard for how these roadworks are impacting the public. I have a work experience student in my constituency office from my old school in Poynton, and she says that her mum describes the traffic lights on the bridge as the “bane of her life.” Traffic routinely backs up all the way to Poynton during rush hour, impacting travel in the north of the constituency. One Poynton resident complained to me that trips to Macclesfield, usually a 10-minute drive, can sometimes take up to an hour. An employee of AstraZeneca who commutes in says that every day they see large tailbacks of traffic with frustrated motorists, and all the while nobody is seen to be working on the bridge.

Another Poynton resident who works in Macc has had to add 20 minutes on to his journey both ways. He says that the queues start from 7.30 in the morning and are not gone until 9.30, so they are not even possible to avoid with flexible working. Forty minutes a day, 200 minutes a week, equals over 10,000 minutes of him sitting in a traffic jam this year. That is 166 hours away from his family before he can relax—or, heaven forbid, go out for the evening. That is 10,000 minutes per person every day—and it is going up—until the bridge is safe and the traffic lights are removed.

Although work sometimes takes place under the bridge out of sight from passers-by, the reality is that no matter how much progress is being made and however earnest the attempts to fix the bridge, this saga has lasted a year. Very little, if anything, took place prior to January and I have had to get increasingly involved with Ringway Jacobs and the highways team at the council. All that is simply not on. Everyone involved owes the residents across Macclesfield’s communities an apology. United Utilities gives compensation to residents if they lose their gas, electricity or internet, even for short periods. Would Ringway Jacobs even be solvent if it had to pay compensation to every driver who has experienced delays?

The disruption caused by the traffic lights at Mill House Bridge pales in comparison with the horror that is the B5470. This saga started with temporary traffic lights due to the embankment structure falling away on part of the road; they were in place, causing disruption, for a few months. In January, the difficult and necessary decision was taken to close the road between Rainow and Kettleshulme after it suffered a much larger collapse of both the carriageway and the supporting embankment following heavy rainfall. The road has been fully closed since January, and I have met with the council multiple times since the closure. I have spoken to the leader and conveyed my absolute demand, on behalf of my constituents, that the road is reopened as soon as possible, because the disruption and the impact on them is profound.