Birmingham Friends of the Earth Action Briefing Dec 98/Jan 99

All not well at MEL

The troubled Anglo-Norwegian engineering and shipbuilding conglomerate Kvaener, one of the partners in Midland Expressway Ltd (MEL), builders of the proposed Birmingham Northern Relief Road, saw it's shares falling on Nov. 3rd after warnings that their quarterly results will be weaker than expected. The company is struggling following high level resignations, increasing the question marks over whether the BNRR, a risky project at the best of times, will ever be built.

This comes on top of the news that Autostrade, their running mate on BNRR, has a toll road in Washington Virginia, which is close to bankruptcy due to overruns in the construction costs and lack of traffic. Other toll roads in Eastern Europe are faring no better.

MEL's chairman, Tom Smith recently announced that the projected cost of building the road had increased to £700m, and also revealed that the Government would have had to pay MEL the £30m planning costs of the road if they had cancelled it. Campaigners against the BNRR are sceptical about the real cost to the government but concluded that whether it was £30m or £100m, the Government had still put it's finances before the interests of the public and the environment.

Brett Rehling