The latest delay to approval of the first phase of the Hereford bypass is being presented as an administrative matter. Approval of the Full Business Case has slipped from July until September, while work on the Holme Lacy Road improvement scheme has also fallen behind schedule because of design changes and technical issues. The council says it will not enter a construction contract until the business case has been approved.

For many people this is simply another frustrating postponement. Yet the real lesson goes much deeper than delays to one road.

Britain has developed a system in which almost every important local decision depends upon lengthy approval procedures, detailed business cases, central government funding and layers of professional assessment. The result is that even projects which enjoy broad local support can spend years moving from one stage of bureaucracy to the next.

This is not simply a Herefordshire problem. It is a national problem created by centralisation.

Localism asks a different question. Why should local communities have so little authority over their own future?

A genuinely local system would allow localities to decide many of their own infrastructure priorities, raise a larger proportion of the money locally, and commission work directly. Decisions would still need to be made carefully and transparently, but they would be made much closer to the people who live with the consequences.

The endless cycle of studies, revisions, approvals and delays consumes both time and public money before a single vehicle uses the road. Every delay increases costs and undermines public confidence.

The bypass itself should not be viewed simply as another transport project. It raises a more fundamental question about how places organise themselves.

In a localist society, transport would be planned as part of a much wider pattern of local economic life. If more employment, shopping, food production, education and services were located within each locality, many journeys would disappear altogether. Roads would still be needed, but their purpose would change. They would connect self-reliant localities rather than compensate for an economy that requires people and goods to travel ever greater distances.

That does not mean bypasses have no place. Existing patterns of development have left Hereford with unacceptable congestion, and practical solutions are needed. But localism reminds us that the long-term answer is not simply to build more roads. It is to reduce unnecessary travel by rebuilding local economies that meet more of people’s daily needs close to home.

The repeated delays to the Hereford bypass therefore illustrate two different futures.

One future continues with increasing central control, where local projects wait for approval from distant institutions and progress depends upon complex administrative processes.

The other future trusts local people with greater responsibility for shaping their own places, reducing dependence on central bureaucracy and creating communities that need fewer large infrastructure projects because more of life takes place locally.

The debate about the bypass is therefore not just about transport. It is about where power should reside. As long as decision making remains concentrated at the centre, delays such as these are likely to remain a normal feature of public life rather than an exception.