QUESTIONS were asked about the relevance of a new bypass even as it was being officially opened in the region.

Ashok Kumar, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, yesterday cut a tape to allow the first vehicles along the final stretch of the completed £14.5m Skelton and Brotton bypass.

Youngsters from Badger Hill Primary School, Brotton, dressed as miners for the launch ceremony, which took place at a roundabout, the centrepiece of which is a giant 16ft winch wheel, used to raise and lower miners' cages between the surface and underground workings.

According to East Cleveland councillors Steve Kay and Bruce MacKenzie, it is a job half done.

Coun MacKenzie said: "Admittedly the bypass will benefit the people of Skelton and Brotton and already provides better access to the Skelton industrial estate, but in its present form, it brings few strategic benefits to east Cleveland."

Coun Kay said: "Instead of being truncated at both ends, the bypass should be extended to provide a highway for the whole of East Cleveland, from Guisborough to Boulby, bypassing Carlin How, Loftus and Easington. Then we'd see some real benefits."

He added: "Common sense and the local economy demands that Redcar and Cleveland Council and Ashok Kumar, MP, go back to the Government for the necessary money to finish the job."

Coun Sylvia Szintai, of Redcar and Cleveland District Council, said: "We have tried to explain to them the cost of the extending the bypass to benefit Loftus and Skelton would not make it a serious proposition. To put resources into a bid for something we would not get would be a waste. It took us years to get the money for the Skelton and Brotton bypass.

"The people of both Skelton and Brotton will benefit from it, so for us it is a happy day."