News that the average Sussex business faces extra costs in excess of £22,000 a year thanks to congestion and traffic jams is absolutely unforgivable (The Argus, December 9).

In these days of job losses – and knock-on increases in home repossessions and fuel poverty – we should be doing everything we can to help businesses, especially the smaller ones, cut their costs.

The Government and local councils must do everything they can to bring us all some seasonal cheer and quickly ease our choked roads.

But I can’t agree with Sussex Enterprise’s conclusion that the answer is to bring new road-building and widening schemes forward.

There are cheaper, more environmentally friendly and more effective ways to cut congestion and we should all be pressing for them as a matter of urgency. Promoting alternatives to car use, for example, using the planning system and conservation policies to encourage mixed-use and car-free developments, speeding up all necessary roadworks by diverting cash from new builds to repairs and reopening some pan- Sussex train lines (Uckfield to Lewes, for example) to increase capacity and routes.

I have today written to the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council asking her to back calls for exactly that.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for South, East England