Mike Bennison - SCC Cllr - Latest information from SCC on Highways and Street Lighting - May 2010
In May 2009 I was given the privilege of serving another four years as your Surrey county councillor covering Hinchley Wood, Claygate and Oxshott.
I wish to thank all of you that supported me at the election when my majority of 34 was increased to nearly 600.
Under the new Surrey County Council Administration I have been given the position of vice-chairman of the transportation select committee and vice-chairman of the local committee, which serves as an interface between the county and the borough. I hope the members of the local committee will agree that there has been a considerable improvement in the working and co-operation between the two parties. This can only be good for all of us in Elmbridge.
This has been a very interesting year for the County, and I have had an opportunity to help change the future of our highways contract.
Having been made the vice-chairman of the transportation select committee, I was given the opportunity during August to run a small committee to decide on the future of the highways contract. This contract was due for renewal in November of this year.
However there was a move of foot to create what was to be called a joint venture between Carillon and Ringway. Whilst chairing this committee I managed to persuade senior officers in Surrey highways not to continue down this avenue, After much discussion taking place over a couple of months my committee managed to persuade not only the transport committee will also the Cabinet to send the contract out for retender in November of this year in order to put in place a new contract starting April 2011.
This had the added advantage of reducing the contract to one instead of the present two allowing Surrey to be viewed as a whole instead of separated into East and West.
The tendering progress is now well on its way and hopefully it will be signed in November of this year for implementation as I said before April 1, 2011.
Some interesting thoughts have been put into this with the help of my committee where we have suggested that the main contract for the resurfacing road building and major parts of the contract with one contract are forming the largest part of the finance.
The other smaller areas such as hedge cutting, tree cutting, retrieving, grass cutting, gully cleaning and other forms of general work should be delegated down to the local boroughs. The way of implementing this will be probably one or several contracts with local management.
Added to this there is the new street lighting contract. This has already been implemented and as far as we are concerned in Elmbridge it is actually starting in Spelthorne initially and then coming into our borough this will take approximately 18 months during which time all streetlights will be replaced by in just a few. You will be consulted 30 days before the work starts in your road.
The new streetlights should give you a much better white light, which is directed down and should avoid light pollution. The main idea is that there will be a tremendous saving in outlet to call Bill and carbon footprint. It is also set up to avoid the past problems where we ended up with lampposts in areas for a considerable length of time awaiting the electrics to be disconnected.
Hopefully within two years we should see a marked improvement on the general operation of all highways issues however this comes with a health warning, which is as follows.
Highways
Since the end of the snow and ice in Surrey staff have repaired in excess of 20,000 road defects, including potholes which are being filled at a rate of 200 a day.
The Leader made an initial extra £500,000 available to fix the damage to the roads caused by the winter weather, to which another £300,000 was later added. In other words an extra £800,000 was spent on our highways simply to deal with the effects of the weather.
We, called for an immediate emergency investment of £100m to patch up Britain’s potholes, and it was notable that the Chancellor was moved to announce such a measure in his budget. Even this discredited Labour government couldn’t ignore a request that was so eminently sensible. Surrey County Council has received £1.5m of these monies.
Emergency funds will fix the short-term problems but it is an unfortunate fact that road maintenance is woefully underfunded by central government and has been for the lifetime of this Labour government. The cost of dealing with Surrey’s roads should not be left to the county’s taxpayers alone – especially when one considers that Surrey’s ‘A’ roads carry twice the national average traffic flow, almost 22,000 vehicles per day, and that a fifth of this is through traffic (in other words 1 in 5 drivers do not contribute to the upkeep of Surrey’s roads).
It is estimated at least £200 million is needed in Surrey alone to get the road network up to scratch but government has failed to provide all but the slimmest slice of this funding. Surrey residents alone provide the Exchequer with more than £700 million each year in road taxes, petrol duties and other road related charges, yet only receive £14m per year for highways.
It has regularly been estimated that Surrey’s residents contribute roughly £5,000 per person per year to the national economy, in addition to the £700 million in road taxes, and according to ‘Oxford Economics’ the UK’s GDP could be £1.6 billion a year higher and tax revenues could be £750 million a year higher if investment in the South East's transport infrastructure had been on par with the national average over the last 15 years.
Why can’t Surrey County Council spend more on highways?
“The birth rate in Surrey is rising sharply and as a result Surrey County Council will have to build an additional 5,000 Primary School places and 1,000 Secondary School places over the next 4 years. This will require us to find or borrow capital funds of £145m to meet this statutory need” says Peter Martin, Cabinet Member for Children and Learning, at Surrey County Council, who also feels that Surrey should be getting more help from central government to help with investment in school buildings.
“This rising birth rate in Surrey is going to add to the existing pressure on our schools caused by Surrey being a net importer of 2,500 secondary pupils and 1,150 primary pupils from London and surrounding counties. We attract children into the County because of the high quality of our schools”.
If we didn’t have to borrow £145m for schools we could borrow those monies to spend on highways.
Under Labour plans for ‘free’ personal care for the elderly, the council faces being saddled with extra costs of up to £28 million up front just for the 2,700 people in Surrey who previously did not get free support but will be entitled to it under the government's pledge.
Michael Gosling, Surrey County Council Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, said: “There is no such thing as free social care because someone always has to pay. With the nation's public finances in such a mess it is complete madness for the government to be planning extra spending without clear costing.
'The impact of this policy on councils like Surrey will be much greater because of the high proportion of people here arranging their own care who will wish to benefit from free support. We face the heavy burden of finding an extra £28m for this at a time of rising demand for services and future sharp cuts in funding”.
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