HANLEY has come a step closer to having a full ring-road after developers opened a new link to motorists.

Drivers can now travel several hundred yards further along the Potteries Way, from the Broad Street roundabout to Clough Street.

The link has been created as part of work on the new £50 million city centre Tesco superstore.

The £1 million route, which will eventually stretch to Etruria Way, has been under construction since January.

The supermarket giant says that the building work has gone smoothly, and that it expects to open the new outlet in mid-November.

The supermarket, which will replace the existing Tesco in Marsh Street, has been in the pipeline for seven years, but was delayed by wrangling over plots of land.

The finished retail site will create about 300 extra jobs and comprise a 100,000 sq ft superstore, 674 parking spaces, a filling station and a path to Broad Street.

But the development is also seen as strategically vital to the future regeneration of the wider city centre.

The lack of a proper ring-road is viewed as a deterrent to potential investors who might otherwise move to Hanley.

The Etruria Way corridor features prominently in blueprints to regenerate the city centre, but motorists currently have to turn down Waterloo Road, in Cobridge, to get on to the ring-road, and navigate along Broad Street and Marsh Street to get back on to the dual carriageway.

These access problems create congestion at peak times, clogging the city centre and making it a less attractive destination for visitors and shoppers.

Tesco has welcomed the opening of the first part of the new link road as a major milestone, and said that the rest of the route will open when the store is completed.

A spokesman said: "The first stage of the route, which we started in January, has now opened to traffic.

"There is another part still to go, but we have already started putting in the infrastructure for that.

"The rest of the road is on course to open at the same time as the store."

Councillor Mervin Smith, the city council's cabinet member for city development (regeneration), said: "We are pleased that the ring road is now taking shape and that the infrastructure of the new road network is now being put into place.

"It is one of the first steps in making traffic around the city centre flow more effectively and to ensure there is the best possible access for people who shop and work in that area."