Part 1 – The Financial Context

Since 2008 the national economy has grown more slowly than predicted.   The big issue here for government means it is getting less money in from taxation to pay for things.  Even a 1% drop in GDP over a period of years is a big problem for government.

Although there is less money coming in the things the state needs to spend money on have not reduced.   Over a long period of time (since 2008) this state of affairs gets harder and harder to manage.  Brexit, Covid and the Truss budget have not helped matters.    

Part 2 – How decisions at national level effect us locally

Labour chancellor Alistair Darling started making cuts after the financial crash in 2008, George Osborne continued and the trend hasn’t stopped.  The easiest cuts for a government to make are those which they won’t be blamed for.  Cutting the money which goes to local governments is a great example of this.  Local government, County & District Councils etc are legally required to balance their books when setting their annual budgets.   If their overall budget is reduced they have to make cuts which they are blamed for.  Although they can and do increase council tax these tax raising powers are very limited.  

Whilst the funding to local government has been reduced the responsibilities local councils bear have not reduced.   For County Councils the big areas of responsibility and cost are adult and children’s social care and education costs including home to school transport and Special Educational Needs. The funding for highways is much smaller than these items.

Part 3 – Why funding for roads was reduced

Local authorities had to cut their costs. When you cut road maintenance there is a period of time when you can get away with those cuts.  For example clearing gullies (drains).  When you make a change to the gulley cleaning approach from regular to discretionary cleaning most people don’t notice.  Furthermore if the gullies were well maintained initially there is a period of grace when there isn’t a lot of difference as the gullies are still functioning but eventually you end up with lots of unnecessary and costly flooding and loads of blocked gullies.  At that point it seems like madness to have ever moved away from the regular gulley clearing. 

Similarly if you reduce the number of roads being resurfaced no one really notices for a while as only a small number of roads were ever resurfaced it’s when you reach the stage where important local roads such as Milton Road in Impington have been on the resurfacing list for years and never reach the top because a more important road always emerges and bumps Milton Road down the list that you wonder if things will ever change.

Part 4 – The future and what I will do

As the County Councillor what people want me to say is we’ve got this covered I can get lines painted and pot holes fixed and all the gullies cleaned but the truth is we don’t have the money to put right all the years of decline over night. The  true cost of getting back to a fully maintained highways estate within Cambridgeshire would be in the £hundreds of millions if not billions and that money does not exist.  What we get instead every now and then is the government offering us £3million to fix pot holes, a sum so small you hardly notice it.

Highways works are extraordinarily costly.  Simply patching up a stretch of New Road last year cost £40,000 if you were to extrapolate that just across Histon, Impington and Orchard Park you can see we are rapidly into the £millions to fix the roads just in this electoral division and we are geographically a very small area compared to others. 

Currently in Histon and Impington there are specific local calls for repainting of lines, pot hole fixing, road resurfacing, improvement of failed raised table surfaces, gulley cleaning, tree and green works. There are also other calls for the funding.  There is simply not enough money to do everything and it is better to be honest and straightforward about this than to pretend that we can do everything and disappoint everyone.    

What we have done since taking control at the County Council is to find an additional £30million to invest in highways maintenance over and above the annual budget allocation.

This is something Liberal Democrats had to fight really hard for in the last budget round. We got a commitment for a two year settlement.  

When we took over the council the highways team was full of gaps at leadership level, due to a really negative internal culture.  We have changed the culture, recruited and got good people into position.  The council is reorganising it’s internal structure to make the highways service more effective but this all takes time.

Locally I have pushed really hard to get things done.   I got extra money spent on repainting of lines along the High Street and nearby areas when the raised table was installed near the Green, but all lines wear away over time.  I pushed to get New Road patched up last year and we have recently seen the road surface near the St Andrews Centre improved.    We have done well in the annual allocation of resurfacing treatments keeping the better quality roads in good condition giving them a longer working life.  Exploratory works near the Holiday Inn on the B1049 lead to new drainage being commissioned which has  eliminated the recurring flooding and I managed to stop flooding on Park Lane and Station Road.  I am personally trying to look down every drain cover in my patch and get the gullies cleared.  This work has lead to gullies which have been blocked for nearly 10 years finally getting cleared. 

There is an extraordinary amount to do but I will continue to work hard for the community.  I will continue to champion the issues.  I am happy to meet with and talk to local residents about these issues but I will not and cannot promise miracles. I am a pragmatic realist, I will fight for my patch but there is only so much I can achieve.