I see from a letter that recently appeared in your newspaper - ‘when is a by-pass not a by-pass’ (10th November 2024) - that I am not the only resident to notice that a £90 million by-pass has done relatively little to reduce traffic congestion in Newtown centre, particularly at the usual times of day.

I suspect that this is caused by an age old disconnect between local and national government: the by-pass was a Welsh Office funded project which does not subsequently relieve our local authority of its apparent need to continue granting planning permissions to substantial businesses - such as supermarkets and fast food outlets - to set up shop within the perimeter of the new road, thereby raising funds to help pay for the council’s obligations and activities, but also unfortunately bringing traffic back into the town.

McDonalds alone is a major cause of congestion in Newtown and should be moved to a more suitable location, with access directly off the by-pass.

READ MORE: Over 2000 houses could be built along Newtown bypass

The same could also be said of the Welshpool by-pass. Everybody knows that traffic otherwise passing through the town on its way to Llanfair Caereinion and beyond should have been directed off the Sarnybryncaled roundabout, straight across Powysland and then onto the Golfa road at an appropriate point.

But this was obviously deemed unacceptable, so we now have a dysfunctional - and downright ugly - Welshpool traffic system that has been expensively changed several times and which still doesn’t work when really needed.

Yes, it would have been expensive, but it would have only needed doing once and would have left the town centre relatively untouched.

I also note that Newtown has not been weight limited, which if enforced, would at least keep unnecessary town centre heavy traffic movements to a minimum.

Perhaps the chief executive of Powys County Council would care to comment - whoever he/she is - and might at the same time update us as to progress on the ‘new’ Newtown footbridge (getting older by the day and still not open) and also on the cost overruns steadily rising on the apparently refurbished Welshpool tourist information building.

He/she might also care to offer some sort of explanation as to why the ordinary people whose money pays for all this stuff always seem to be the ones who end up feeling short changed.

Keith Chadwick
Newtown