THIS week's announcement about the upgrading of the A1 in North Yorkshire to three-lane motorway standard is overdue - by about six years.

It was a previous Tory Government which pulled the plug on the upgrading in 1996 - having put it into the roads programme five years prior to that. All the preparatory work had been done, the surveys had been completed and the compulsory purchase of land, homes and businesses had been pushed through.

When the scheme was shelved in a round of public spending cuts, that work was abandoned and all the compulsorily purchased property went back on the market. For the most part that property was sold for peanuts because purchasers knew the upgrading would happen one day.

Now the process starts all over again. Millions of pounds have been wasted by the stop-go decision-making but, more importantly, the delays have cost lives. Many more motorists will die or be injured before the upgrading scheme is completed towards the end of this decade.

In the five years to 2000 there were 583 personal injury accidents on the Bramham to Barton stretch, a third of which were fatal or very serious. There will be at least 1,000 more before the last yard of tarmac is laid.

During that time the congestion will also increase with the consequent effect on business in the region.

As the North-East economy continues to underperform relative to the other regions of Britain, it remains a scandal that the standard motorway link will not be in place until 2010 at the earliest.