YOUR VIEWS How are we going to afford to pay for this grand road scheme?

REGARDING your front page story on August 30, doesn’t that just take the biscuit?

“The system will be put in place to accommodate improvement works to cope with increased traffic following the introduction of the A6 to Manchester Airport Relief Road.”

We were informed by here- today- and- gonetomorrow councillors and massively overpaid council panjandrums that the building of this road would decrease local traffic.

As we said all along, this was a lie.

In addition, we have to pay for the maintenance of this road from our council tax, as it is very much a council project.

How exactly are we going to afford that then? I would ask them, but Stockport council is ignoring all Freedom of Information requests on the subject, despite the leader of the council working for the Information Commissioner.

I guess they all have a lot to hide. Sheila Oliver Romiley the Red Rock development in Stockport? I haven’t seen the front of it but the back is right next to and clearly visible to people driving though Stockport on the motorway.

This development should be attractive to entice people to come into the town, but instead we get something that looks cheap and tacky.

If you want a good example of town centre developments done right just take a look at the old Town Hall in Oldham, which has won architectural awards.

Oldham is one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, if they can afford to employ decent architects then why can’t Stockport? Daniel M Address supplied embarrassment for him - but let me spell it out.

It is the Conservativeled Cheshire East Council who, sensing a nice little earner for themselves as they own the land, have decided to put forward the site opposite Marks & Spencer for development.

They wish to concrete over the Greenbelt for the sake of a quick buck and the resulting traffic impact of the 2,000 houses they wish to build will be most sorely felt in Stockport.

As most locals know, the A34 is rammed now at peak times and the consequences of all the extra cars, making their way towards Manchester, hardly bear thinking about.

No matter how much he tries to obfuscate the issue now, he really can’t avoid the key fact that the plans he now says are opposed by local Conservatives are in fact proposed by... local Conservatives! Albeit from just over the borough boundary.

Residents could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the right hand really doesn’t know what the left hand is up to. Do these fellow Conservatives never speak to each other?

At the end of the day local people might well ask, especially as Stockport now has two Tory MPs, how this development - so strongly opposed by residents on both sides of the borough boundary - can have been allowed to progress so far.

The only possible conclusions are either that Stockport Conservatives, councillors and MPs have been ignored by their friends over the border or that they are totally powerless to influence the decision. In which case, what is the point of them? Councillor Mark Hunter Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Stockport Council