I do hope common sense prevails over this Weymouth relief road saga.

Plans for one have been around for some 50 years now, but now the pressing need for one must overcome the reservations expressed in the main by conservation bodies.

In this increasingly bureaucratic world we live in, important decisions like this one are taking years - sometimes decades - to make.

Throughout Dorset County Council has struggled manfully to push the road through, whatever the hurdles imposed by Government.

Yet, here we are again, this time having to examine the issue of "need".

If we did not need a road, one would not have been proposed.

And quite apart from the Olympics, most businessmen I've spoken to in Weymouth and Portland are unanimous on the "need" for this road.

If businesses are to expand and create more jobs, they need a vastly improved infrastructure that, naturally, includes the relief road.

Our instinct in this beautiful part of the world is to preserve.

But this must be balanced with a generous dollop of common sense, to ensure that employment and wealth can be generated in our largely rural constituency.

Richard Drax, Conservative, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, South Dorset.