Road safety schemes slashed to pay for massive overspend on Rugby relief road

12.40.41pm GMT Wed 3rd Feb 2010

"A disaster for essential road safety and improvement schemes across Warwickshire."

So says Cllr. John Whitehouse (Kenilworth Abbey), Liberal Democrat spokesman for the Environment & Economy, responding to the latest capital budget figures released at Warwickshire County Council's Cabinet meeting last week.

The unfinished Rugby Western Relief Road

Confirming earlier reports, the costs of the Rugby Western Relief Road have leaped by a massive £12.1 million, from £42.9 million to £55.0 million, with no cast iron guarantees that further increases will not occur over the remaining months of the contract.

The Conservative Cabinet, having decided to finance this cost over-run through a combination of extra borrowing and cuts to other road programmes, made clear last week the full impact of this decision, with £5.4 million being wiped off other essential projects to maintain the integrity of the county's highways network and to continue vital road safety and improvement schemes.

Important road safety schemes affected include funding for Safer Routes to School, whose budget is cut from £0.6 million to just over £0.1 million, and Pedestrian & Cycle Crossing Facilities (budget of £0.2 million reduced to zero).

Major improvement schemes deferred include the Warwick-Leamington Cycleway (£0.4 million) and Rugby town centre improvements (£0.8 million). £1.8 million has been wiped off the structural maintenance programme for the county's bridges, a reduction of nearly 50%.

"The scale of these budget cuts is appalling," continued John Whitehouse, "and it is scandalous that an inability to control costs on a single major project can cause such devastation to so many other essential schemes."

At the Cabinet meeting, Liberal Democrat opposition leader Cllr. Jerry Roodhouse (Rugby Eastlands & Hillmorton) sought assurances that findings from an in-depth review of what went wrong with the Rugby Western Relief Road project would be made public, debated fully by elected members and necessary lessons learned for the future.

He said afterwards: "We received no firm guarantees on when or how this might happen. Hiding behind a cloak of a need for commercial confidentiality, the Cabinet seems determined to keep the lid on this disaster for as long as they possibly can, probably until after the General Election.

"Liberal Democrats believe it is wrong that the whole burden of this massive cost overrun should fall on the road programme, especially when the Conservatives are pressing ahead with expensive office refurbishment programmes that we criticised a year ago.

"The wrong priorities are continuing to be applied, by a Conservative administration that has lost touch with what is important and what is not. How can they justify spending on new offices when so many vital road safety programmes are being slashed?"