Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Stephen Hammond

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

16. If he will commission a feasibility study for a Worthing/Lancing bypass due to traffic congestion on the A27.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

The Department has no current plans to undertake a feasibility study into proposals for a Worthing/Lancing bypass. We have been clear that the funding is currently focused on delivering schemes already in the Highways Agency’s investment programme.

[Tim Loughton]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his new position. With it, he inherits the issue of the lack of a Worthing bypass, which predates his parliamentary career and mine. Worthing is the largest town in Sussex. The major house-building programmes that are planned for my area all feed out on to the A27. The situation will only get worse. Will he come down and sit in the traffic on the A27, as have his predecessors, to see the problem for himself? Will he agree to put back on the agenda a value-for-money study of one of the busiest roads in the south-east of England that needs investment?

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, generous in his remarks of welcome. His invitation is equally generous, and I do not think I can refuse it.