(1 day, 5 hours ago)
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Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is a great privilege to secure a debate on a matter that is causing immense anxiety across Westmorland and beyond. National Highways is planning to close and replace seven bridges that carry the M6 motorway over the Lune gorge in Cumbria. Those S-joint bridges are reaching the end of their lifespan and we recognise that this work has to be done.
The wider Lune gorge project proposes bridge replacements, overnight closures, weekend shutdowns and contraflow systems operating at sometimes as little as 30 mph. Crucially, the plan also entails the closure of the southbound junction at Tebay for 18 months, followed by the closure of the northbound junction for a subsequent 18 months. We argue that the junction 38 closures are not necessary, that there are clear alternatives such as temporary slip roads, and that insufficient attention has been paid to those alternatives. All the while, National Highways intends to keep heavy traffic moving through rural diversion routes and has, astonishingly, not produced a full impact assessment for the project—no assessment of the impact on the road network and no assessment of the impact on the wider community.
I do not think it is just parochial hyperbole when I say that the Lune gorge is without doubt the most spectacular and beautiful stretch of the UK’s motorway network, so I suspect that when the Department for Transport and National Highways looked at that stretch of the M6 while weighing up the project in its early days, they were struck more by the scenery and far less by the very significant population that depends on junction 38 and therefore did not give them very much serious consideration at all. Local communities rely on junction 38 for access to work, school, health services, business and the operation of the local economy.
The current plan will devastate local businesses—whose model is often completely reliant on proximity to the M6 and the junctions north and south—effectively isolating the community from the motorway for three years within a wider programme of four to six years of ongoing disruption. It also puts the safety of my constituents at risk, given that emergency services’ access to our communities will be severely curtailed for years on end. I recently spent time with our wonderful ambulance crews, who were keen that I should emphasise this point especially.
The impact on our communities will be enormous. The key effects are first and foremost on the village of Tebay itself, but there will also be an impact on a much wider area. Seven bridges carry the M6 itself, and they need replacing—I get that. The eighth bridge, across the M6, which also requires replacement, carries the A685 connecting Tebay with Kendal, 12 miles away, and is the only remaining link between the two when the M6 junction is closed. As a community, we campaigned hard to persuade National Highways not to close this bridge at the same time as the other seven, and we are grateful that National Highways has changed its mind on this point. I thank everyone who campaigned hard with us to achieve this success, which means that Tebay, Orton, Ravenstonedale, Kirkby Stephen and other villages will now at least have one connecting road to Kendal; otherwise, residents taking their children to school, and commuters, would have faced an additional 250 miles a week for an 18-month period.
Having said that, the A685 is a winding, narrow, single carriageway running for 12 miles from Tebay to Kendal, and for 18 months, all local traffic will be dependent on it, meaning a huge increase in traffic going through Tebay, Grayrigg and Kendal in particular. My first ask of the Minister is to ensure that this traffic is managed along the whole of this route and that the A685 Lawtland House bridge is strengthened and kept safe through this time, when this already weakened bridge will be facing massively increased usage, carrying an enormous volume of traffic displaced from the M6. The towns of Kirkby Stephen and Kendal are already at capacity and breaking point when it comes to traffic management and cannot withstand a motorway’s worth of displaced traffic; they cannot withstand it at all, but they certainly cannot withstand it regularly and for years on end.
Westmorland and Furness council is set to lose £39 million a year due to the new, ironically-titled fairer funding 2.0 settlement—a staggering 13% cut to its budget. It will therefore not have the funds to expand traffic management in consideration of the volume of traffic to keep those roads safe and flowing securely. Incidentally, this is a financial settlement that puts at risk the council’s crucial investment in the town of Barrow, which is critical to the UK’s defence capability, including our nuclear deterrent. I would be grateful if the Minister took this matter up separately with his colleagues the Secretaries of State for Defence and for Housing, Communities and Local Government. This cut would be a colossal strategic own goal for the Government—one they would rightly get the blame for—but there is still time to reverse it.
For this debate, though, the key point I want the Minister to focus on is that the closure of junction 38 southbound and then northbound, for three years in total, will be catastrophic for our communities. It can and must be avoided.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Mr Shannon, this is a very narrow debate, specifically on junction 38 of the M6. I seek an assurance that your intervention relates only to that.
Jim Shannon
It is more than that, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is about the main thoroughfare for lorries and traffic going to Stranraer and then to Larne. It is about that road and that junction. [Laughter.] No, it is a fact. I have talked to those who transport agrifood goods from Northern Ireland to the north of England and Scotland and back again. This debate is wide; its subject will impact not just the local area, but all the businesses in Northern Ireland that need lorries to bring their food in and take their food out. The agrifood sector will be impacted greatly.
Tim Farron
The hon. Gentleman is a world-standard crowbar applier in this place, but that was not a crowbar—that was very relevant. England’s connectivity with Ireland via Stranraer is utterly affected by what is happening at junction 38. He is absolutely on the money, and I am very grateful for his point.
We must avoid the closures of these junctions. Let us start with one group who are mentioned regularly and helped rarely: at a time when they are already facing so many threats and pressures, the closures will be a logistical nightmare for our farmers, who will face rising fuel costs, some land being made inaccessible to them, and threats to animal welfare as they have to make more arduous journeys throughout this three-year period.
Secondly, given the Government’s priority of seeking economic growth, the junction closures are also a huge risk to our multibillion-pound tourism economy. Tailbacks north and south and the junction closures will mean that some of the 20 million visitors we have each year will vote with their feet, putting many of the 60,000 hospitality and tourism jobs in our county at risk, and further damaging the UK’s fiscal position.
Local businesses will be hit by the closures, including—I do not think this is parochial hyperbole either—Britain’s finest service station, Westmorland services at Tebay—
Tim Farron
Thank you. There will be an estimated cost to the service station alone of £1 million in damage if the junction is closed. Dozens of other businesses will also be affected, with millions of pounds of lost revenue, increased costs and the potential loss of hundreds of jobs.
As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, there will be a huge national impact on the haulage industry. Most lorry companies use junction 38 as their halfway point on the route to Scotland and the ferry ports serving Ireland. With the closure this coming January of the M6 at Clifton—at the top end of my constituency near junction 40—heavy goods vehicle drivers coming from Scotland and the ports connecting us to Ireland will be diverted from Penrith, across the A66 to Scotch Corner, down the A1(M), and across the M62 to rejoin the M6 near Warrington. That is a colossal detour, with horrendous costs in fuel and journey times—and that is only for a few weekends at the beginning of next year. The Lune gorge plan is to run for four to six years, not a few weekends. The work will have an enormous negative economic impact for the whole country. The consequences have clearly not been fully thought through.
Given that we know some of the impacts of the closures, we have asked National Highways for sight of its impact assessment. To my utter astonishment, it has not conducted one. The Minister can blame previous Conservative Ministers for that failure if he wishes, but he only gets to do that if he puts it right immediately this evening. Where is the economic impact assessment? Where is a credible traffic management plan?
With help from local residents, businesses and farmer groups, we did our own survey of the impact and calculated that the damage just to that relatively small section of the local community who live in the villages closest to junction 38 would be upwards of £10 million over three years. The real impact would be much wider, of course, and therefore the cost would be much, much higher.
The closure of junction 38 would also mean greater pressures on junction 37 to the south and junction 39 to the north, both of which are dangerous hammerhead junctions. Junction 37 has seen three tragic fatalities and many other accidents in the last 18 months alone, yet National Highways’ current plan—such as it is—is to send tens of thousands of vehicles down to junction 37, or up to the similarly designed junction 39. Those junctions are to be used as crude roundabouts by extremely heavy vehicles in utterly unreasonable volumes. Again, this underlines the failure to conduct a meaningful impact assessment or present any kind of credible traffic management plan.
The crucial problem that I want the Minister to focus on is the closure of junction 38 southbound for 18 months and then northbound for 18 months. It is completely unacceptable. Let’s face it—National Highways would have never even considered it in a more urban part of the network. I reiterate that we are not against the works taking place. We know that the bridges need to be replaced, but there are clearly alternatives to lengthy closures of junction 38, yet those alternatives have not been seriously considered or properly investigated.
I have a high regard for so many of the people I work with from National Highways, but from the beginning of this project there has been a failure to consider the community and the Cumbrian economy. Now that National Highways is being called to account and asked serious questions, it seems as though excuses are being made rather than solutions being explored.
Local businesses commissioned the well-respected motorway highways consultants BWB, which produced a detailed feasibility study confirming that temporary slip roads are absolutely possible—indeed, they are straightforward if the order of bridge removals is slightly rearranged. National Highways rejected this proposal with, at best, a cursory assessment, and it has provided no credible reasons for doing so.
On behalf of my communities in Westmorland, my first ask is that the Minister looks at the proposals himself, takes independent expert advice from his officials, and at the same time instructs National Highways to properly, formally consider the temporary slip roads—to make certain that these very credible plans are properly evaluated. Meanwhile, as the works proceed, many full motorway closures are planned, and the apparent plan is to route the entire M6 load through the narrow streets of Kendal and Kirkby Stephen. This is ludicrous and unsustainable, and it will take ministerial intervention to put right.
The second ask therefore relates to the Kendal relief road, otherwise known as the northern access route. In 2023 the previous Government pledged £460 million for 21 “smaller road schemes” across the north, including potentially a short new road linking the A591 Windermere Road to the A6 Shap Road just north of our thriving but often congested main town of Kendal, but in July the Department for Transport announced that the scheme’s future had been placed under review, with a final decision set to be announced by the end of the year. Given the disruption from the M6 closures already this year, the case for that road is stronger than ever. Can that project be brought forward so that it can be done before the M6 Lune gorge project happens?
The third ask is for help to be provided to solve the congestion that M6 and A66 closures have on the beautiful town of Kirkby Stephen. The provision of new, additional off-road parking for residents on South Road in Kirkby Stephen, along with sensible highways modifications, would mostly solve the problems there too. Will the Minister please instruct his officials to take action on that point before the work on the Lune gorge bridges causes repeated chaos to the town?
Fourthly, earlier this year the Government gave the green light for the A66 dualling after our lengthy campaign, and I am grateful to them for that. The plan includes an underpass close to the M6 junction 40 underneath the notoriously busy Kemplay Bank roundabout at Penrith. It is vital that the work is sequenced before the M6 closures so as to avoid crippling congestion around Penrith and to alleviate the devastating impact of running those projects at the same time. The solutions are here—experts have done the work and local businesses have provided the evidence—yet National Highways has not meaningfully considered the very options that would prevent economic and social disaster for our communities.
My final ask of the Minister tonight is this: will he meet me, along with representatives of the local community, local businesses and their skilled highways consultants, to discuss the temporary slip road proposals and the wider sequencing of these works? If he can visit the Westmorland site in person, we would welcome that hugely, and that would help him to see at first hand the issues that our local communities are facing. But time is of the essence, so we will gladly meet him in London if that can happen more speedily. It is essential that he understands for himself the profound and unnecessary impact that the project will have on Kendal, Burneside, Grayrigg, Tebay, Orton, Ravenstonedale and Kirkby Stephen, and on the wider economy of the Lake district, the dales, Cumbria as a whole and the UK’s haulage industry. The M6 bridge work must be done to keep us safe for generations to come, but it is wrong for it to be done in ways that ignore the catastrophic impact on our residents, communities and businesses in Westmorland.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Simon Lightwood)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on securing this debate on the M6 Lune gorge project and his passionate advocacy on behalf of his constituents. Our strategic road network is one of the nation’s most vital pieces of infrastructure, with our motorways and major A roads forming the backbone of connectivity across England. The network links our towns and cities, ports and airports, and it is relied upon by millions of people and businesses every single day. The Government remain firmly committed to its resilience, renewal and replacement, with nearly £1.3 billion allocated for capital renewals in 2025-26.
I note the hon. Gentleman’s commitment not only in securing the debate but through his wider engagement with National Highways and the Government on this matter. He is a strong advocate for his constituents, businesses and local road users. While recognising the need for the M6 Lune gorge scheme, he has campaigned extensively to minimise the impact on his constituency. I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to address the M6 Lune gorge project and the concerns raised regarding traffic management, and in particular the option of providing temporary slip roads.
Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that this Government, working closely with National Highways, fully recognise the scale and significance of the project. We understand the profound impact that transport infrastructure has on local communities, and not just in terms of connectivity but in safeguarding economic growth and quality of life. That is why we are committed to delivering a solution that is both robust and responsive to the needs of those it serves.
The M6 is a key corridor on our strategic road network and the main north-south transport axis. Early intervention is therefore essential to ensure those structures remain safe, resilient and in service. The M6 Lune gorge project is a significant and complex renewal scheme on the strategic road network. It is located within the gorge of the River Lune in Cumbria, between the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales national parks. Its purpose is to enable the vital replacement of bridge decks along a 10 km stretch of the M6 from Castle Howe bridge, adjacent to junction 38, to High Gill bridge, north of junction 37. The scheme involves eight similarly constructed structures, each now at, or approaching, the end of its operational life. Over time, these bridges have suffered significant deterioration, driven by increased traffic volumes, heavier vehicles and the growing impacts of climate change.
Construction on this project is scheduled to commence in the spring of 2027. During this period, road closures will be necessary, including the consecutive closure of both the southbound and northbound carriageways at junction 38, with diversion routes in place for road users throughout to maintain connectivity.
Safety remains National Highways’ foremost priority. To protect both the workforce and road users, there will be occasions when the full closure of the junction is unavoidable. These closures will be scheduled during weekends and overnight periods, when traffic is lighter, in order to minimise disruption. As construction approaches in spring 2027, National Highways will finalise these plans and provide clear, timely communication to ensure that road users and local communities are fully informed, to enable them to plan their journeys. The Government and National Highways remain firmly committed to engaging with local communities, to listen to the concerns and to mitigate disruption wherever possible. Following feedback from the local community, National Highways announced in September 2025 the deferral of works on Lawtland House bridge to provide an additional route of access for residents of Tebay while essential works are undertaken at junction 38.
During the initial design stages of the project prior to May 2024, National Highways considered and assessed the opportunity of using temporary slip roads. At that time, this approach was not considered feasible due to spatial constraints, value for money considerations, the need for significant lane and speed restrictions and the likelihood of a costly extension to the overall construction period.
Tim Farron
If possible, I would be grateful to have sight of the workings showing National Highways’ consideration of the slip roads, and what drawings and designs it did and then discarded. I have not heard of this to this date, and I am not convinced that it did that at all.
Simon Lightwood
I am quite certain that the hon. Gentleman will continue his engagement with National Highways, and I am sure that they can have that conversation together.
As I said, during the initial design stages of the project, prior to May 2024, National Highways considered and assessed the opportunity of those slip roads. However, following further engagement by National Highways with local communities, additional proposals for temporary slip roads were submitted by stakeholders in September and October 2025. While these broadly reflected options previously deemed unfeasible, further information was provided by an independently commissioned engineering consultancy company. National Highways has committed to a detailed feasibility review of the information produced by that consultancy company. The review is under way and will consider the impact on road users and the costs of the scheme, and with consideration of local communities. The review is expected to conclude by January 2026 and National Highways has committed to provide the outcome of this work by the end of January. I look forward to receiving the report, alongside the hon. Member and other stakeholders.
The hon. Member mentioned traffic impact assessments. National Highways understands the impact this work will have on the region and has undertaken an assessment of the impact on traffic flows of the proposed traffic management arrangements. In line with standard practice, National Highways has prepared and shared a traffic management strategy with stakeholders, which will be refined into detailed plans as we approach construction in spring 2027.
I fully understand the hon. Member’s concerns regarding the impact of road closures during the construction of this project. These are legitimate and important considerations for local communities and road users alike. National Highways has no intention of inconveniencing road users, but it accepts that, due to the nature and scale of this type of work, especially where there is a need for road closures, some level of disruption is unavoidable. However, let me assure him that National Highways is committed to carefully reviewing the proposals submitted for temporary slip roads.
The M6 Lune gorge project represents an essential renewal of the strategic road network—a critical transport corridor in our country. The scheme is not simply about replacing infrastructure; it is about safeguarding connectivity, supporting economic growth and ensuring the safety and resilience of a route that serves thousands of road users every day. Without sustained and strategic investment, the strategic road network risks deterioration, which would constrain economic growth, erode productivity and lead to significantly higher long-term costs. I am sure that the hon. Member will agree that investing in the maintenance and renewal of our road network ultimately benefits the whole community.
This Government, working in close partnership with National Highways, are fully committed to delivering this project in a way that minimises disruption to road users and local communities. That is why every effort is being made to plan carefully, communicate clearly and implement measures that reduce inconvenience wherever possible.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this matter for debate and for his continued advocacy on behalf of his constituency. I welcome ongoing engagement with him following National Highways’ review of the additional slip road proposals, and as this important project progresses to see what we can achieve to provide a positive outcome for road users and all stakeholders, including his constituents.
Tim Farron
I feel that the Minister is about to conclude, so I just want to press him on the meeting with myself and the local community. Is he willing to do that? He is welcome to come to Westmorland, but we would happily come down to see him here.
Simon Lightwood
As I mentioned, I think it would be a good idea to wait until January to understand the outcome of the assessment that National Highways is undertaking on the slip road proposals.
Question put and agreed to.