Tory u-turn on Council resources

Barely two weeks after they voted against a similar set of proposals from the Liberal Democrats to imporve roads, County Tories finally proposed a package of measures that make a small use of a projected £13m underspend and £110m reserves. Liberal Democrats added the following submission welcoming the move and the acceptance of our arguments all along.

"The Liberal Democrat group fully supports the requests made by the Environment and Transport Department for £2m for Highways Maintenance. The backlog of works which residents and Councillors continually raise at Highways Forums demonstrates the need for the Council to be more proactive in using its resources to actually help local residents and communities.

Despite attacks made by Conservatives that our proposals two weeks ago to spend some of the £110m of reserves were at best profligate, we are pleased that the administration is listening to us on the need to be more proactive with the Councils resources and only wished they had the foresight to do more to support the local economy.

We particularly welcome the fact that reserves have been used to increase resources for departments and effective schemes such as the allocation towards the LA mortgage scheme. We view this as an incremental step towards supporting the local economy. But much more can and should be done."

Simon Galton CC

July 2012