RESIDENTS have given a mixed reception to the news that a by-pass linking the M48 to the A48 near Tutshill is being planned by Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire County Councils.

Councillors from both sides of the England-Wales border met at the Forest of Dean District Council’s Coleford offices last week and came up with a ‘preferred’ route for a desperately-needed by-pass around Chepstow.

The route would be from the M48 at junction two near the Severn Bridge sliproad, skirting Homebase at Thornwell and Sedbury and linking up with the A48 near Tidenham.

A £1 million study is to be undertaken as step two towards the project now that the councillors have met, while the Welsh Government in Cardiff and Central Government in Westminster are to be lobbied to help towards the cost of the study.

The by-pass would ease the chronic congestion leading out of Chepstow and often stretching northwards towards the Forest of Dean each day.

People shopping in Sedbury this week, though, believed the by-pass was a good idea but some did not think it would be constructed anytime soon.

Businesswoman Caroline Newman, from Sedbury but who has a company in Bulwark, said: “It will not be built in my lifetime. We have hit the stage now where we are totally gridlocked around Chepstow and it is going to get worse with all the house building that is going on.