WE CAN’T quite believe this but the public inquiry into the long-awaited M4 relief road around Newport has been delayed.

Planned for months and due to start in four weeks’ time, the inquiry is now not expected to start until March 2017.

In a proposed project which has been beset by delays since it was first mentioned decades ago, there is a sort of inevitability about this latest pause.

But we know it will be a source of huge frustration for many who think it is high time this road was built.

The delay is down to a change in the way the Department for Transport says projected traffic figures should be calculated and the Welsh Government now says it will have to re-evaluate the evidence it would have submitted to the inquiry.

The Welsh Government says it is as committed to the scheme as ever and argues that this move will not affect the planned timetable of the project as a whole.

We hope that is right. This is a project which has been talked about an awful lot but which has been painfully slow in progressing in any meaningful way.

Meanwhile, Newport continues to get gridlocked on a fairly regular basis which has a negative effect on all who live and work here.