Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to relieve congestion on roads in Hampshire.

On Monday of this week we published the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Growth Deals, including both Deals which cover Hampshire; Solent LEP and EM3 LEP.

Working with the Solent LEP, Government has agreed to fund 2 schemes to relieve congestion on the Gosport peninsula.

The Gosport Road and A27 improvement scheme and The Peel Common Roundabout Improvement scheme, a pinch point on the local road network near the Enterprise Zone, Daedalus.

While Stubbington Bypass and the Newgate Lane South schemes were not allocated funding in the deal directly, there is a commitment for the Government and the LEP to negotiate in 2014 a further phase of co investment to deliver strategic infrastructure to support the development of network capacity to and from the Gospport peninsula – including Stubbington Bypass.

Working with the EM3 LEP, Government has agreed to fund 3 schemes to relieve congestion around Basingstoke; Basingstoke Northern Corridor to Growth A33, Basingstoke North Eastern Corridor A340 partial dualling and the Basingstoke South Western Corridor scheme. All of these schemes will reduce current congestion levels and help mitigate future congestion from new housing and business sites.

The Whitehill/Bordon Relief road will remove the severance caused by the A325 and improve traffic flows through the towns to reduce congestion.

EM3 have also been allocated £20.7m, with £4.3m in the first year to for a transport fund which will comp[rise of sustainable transport schemes to alleviate congestion in the identified growth and step up towns within the LEP area