RED-faced highways bosses have admitted revised evidence for the Longdendale Bypass public inquiry has been delayed yet again — now until May next year.

The Highways Agency claim their research is taking longer than expected "due to great care being taken to verify and assess results".

The update report, published on Monday, also reveals the agency wants to hold yet another series of exhibitions to explain the changes to the evidence.

Fury

It has sparked fury among critics on an anti-bypass website who demanded the public inquiry be scrapped, claiming the whole process has been built on "foundations of clay".

In June the highways chiefs repeated its promise the evidence would be ready by October.

But in July it emerged the cost of the bypass had rocketed from £184m to a possible £315m.

The inquiry was dramatically halted in autumn last year when it emerged the Highways Agency had miscalculated how much traffic would use the A616 trunk road.

It was expected to reconvene this summer, but the agency now admit it will take much longer.

Mike Flynn, of the Longdendale Siege Committee, which supports the bypass, has branded the latest delay "outrageous".

He said: "People living locally will become so disheartened if this carries on. It amazes me that the Highways Agency can be so inefficient.

"Having another set of exhibitions is a complete waste of time. The evidence is plain to see for people living in our clogged-up villages.

"The government need to step in and sort this out urgently."

A spokesman for the Highways Agency said recently: "It’s such a huge undertaking we’re having to redo all the traffic modelling and the software that goes with that.

"That has knock-on effects for other figures that have been supplied and the environmental effects and so on."

In January it emerged the bypass had already cost £13.7m of public money without a foot of Tarmac being laid. The figure has now reached more than £15m.

The inquiry at Stalybridge Civic Hall started last June and was expected to take just 10 weeks. But the agency is currently making its fifth attempt to draw up the right plans for the bypass.

The proposed three-and-half-mile bypass will divert traffic from the A628 and congested roads through Mottram, Tintwistle and Hollingworth.

Residents of the towns have been campaigning for a bypass since the 1970s as lorries have switched from the M62 across the Pennines to Sheffield and the south.

But anti-bypass campaigners such as the Save Swallows Wood campaign say it will destroy wildlife and valuable habitats.