I APPLAUD Bill Cowburn’s suggestion for a Knutsford bypass, Guardian, July 26.

I submitted to this newspaper, a similar plan to the one in his photograph a few months ago, but with the ‘Mobberley’ end terminating on the eastern end of the Parkgate Industrial Estate.

There are submitted plans to build houses on the optimum route between A50 and A5033, but the road could bisect the proposed estates, if it were incorporated into the plans, or could be re-routed around them at increased cost.

I pointed out that around 2,000 additional cars can be expected on the roads of Knutsford when proposed developments are occupied, exacerbating the peak time traffic chaos around the Adams Hill traffic lights and all approaches to the Canute Place roundabout.

There’s only one north-south route through the town.

Local landowners and the property developers are going to make a significant profit out of house building in the next five years, and it would be entirely appropriate that permission to build were to be conditional on financing the required infrastructure improvements to support the consequent increase in the town’s population.

They are causing the problems, let them fund the solutions.

In addition to a bypass, there’s a need for additional parking provision, medical care, leisure provision, and much more.

Is it too much to expect our council and ‘planning’ to determine requirements and put the infrastructure in place before the houses get completed and the builders have moved on?

Or are we going to wait until gridlock occurs, and wring our hands in despair that there’s no money for a bypass?

Sadly, I know which one I’m putting my money on.

Tony Booth Lower Peover