Business leaders urge future owners of M6 toll to use the road to ease £2.2b delays

Vehicles approach Britain's first motorway toll on the M6 in Staffordshire in 2003 Credit: Rui Vieira / PA Archive/Press Association Images

Business leaders in Greater Birmingham have urged the future owners of the M6 toll to ensure that it becomes an integral part of the UK’s motorway network, in order to help ease congestion, believed to be costing West Midlands firms more than £2.2 billion a year.

The controversial road, condemned for low traffic levels and failure to ease the burden on the M6, has been put up for sale with a price tag of nearly £2 billion.

Operated by Midland Expressway, the 27-mile route between Cannock and Coleshill opened in 2003 but has run up a total debt of around £1.9 billion and is now being sold by the group of banks who own it.