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MP urges Council to get on with pothole repairs - B&NES fails to back-up political claims about so-called funding ‘shortfalls’ which don’t actually exist
And he’s brushed aside ‘unfounded’ complaints from Bath & North East Somerset Council that it’s not been given enough money to deal with road repairs.
“It’s nonsense for B&NES to say the money is not there,” he said. “B&NES has freedom to spend millions on highway maintenance if it wishes – instead it’s spending the bare minimum and chooses instead to waste its money on unwanted things like glossy PR propaganda, Chief Executive salaries, and servicing the debt from its disastrous Bath Spa project.”
Having been inundated with requests from constituents for pothole repairs during the second half of 2009 - since setting up his special Pothole Alert Text service - Dan called on Conservative-run B&NES to get its financial house in order and do something about the potholes infesting the roads right across his constituency.
He said: “Recent weeks have seen complaints from constituents about road surfaces in roads including Frederick Avenue (Peasedown), Somerset Folly (Timsbury), and Greyfield Road (High Littleton).
He said: “Saltford’s Montague Road is another source of real concern for residents. The state of the road is outrageous. At my recent site meeting there – which no one from B&NES bothered to attend despite being invited with three weeks’ notice – it was clear that action urgently needs to be taken to deal with this matter by resurfacing large stretches of the road completely.”
In an extraordinary move, a senior non-political council officer wrote to Dan in December saying that B&NES accepted that “the road surface (in Montague Road) has exceeded its design life and if resources permitted we would have resurfaced this before it reached its current condition”.
But the officer, Matthew Smith (Divisional Director of Environmental Services) went on to claim its funding from the Government for highway repairs was £2 million below a supposed Government recommended amount, and that consequently B&NES could not afford to do any more than a basic patching-up job.
Dan’s research shows that this is simply not the case. The Department for Transport does NOT calculate recommended amounts that local authorities should be spending on road repairs. Funding is decided through a formula based on the road length, condition and number of bridges and street lights in each local authority. For the year 2009/10, this figure for B&NES is just over £3.2 million.
And councils are also free to use money from other sources to maintain its roads - one such source is the Revenue Support Grant. However, B&NES has chosen not to put in any extra money to deal with road repairs
It also appears not to have used the £122,900 in extra money given by the Government to set up a Transport Asset Management Plan (TAMP). This plan would enable the council to keep on top of the state of its roads and plan its repairs efficiently. However the B&NES TAMP is still in development, according to B&NES’ own website.
“In an attempt to give B&NES the benefit of any doubt, I asked Mr Smith to clarify the exact source of the £2 million so-called shortfall that he alleged was down to the Government,” said Dan. Despite acknowledging the request on 14 December, and promising to respond within ‘a couple of days’ he has failed to do so. B&NES’ complaints are unfounded.”
“It’s time for B&NES to get a grip and get these repairs on the road. The money is there, it’s simply a question of having the will to use it in the right way,” he said.
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North
East Somerset MP Dan Norris is stepping up his campaign to get pothole-ridden
roads right across North East Somerset - in places including Peasedown
St John, Timsbury and High Littleton - repaired and resurfaced.