Sir
I have often felt that the highways department wasted huge amounts of money on gratuitous transport schemes. Indeed I have written quite a few letters to your paper on this subject.
A while ago I had a conversation in the Town Hall with a member of the highways department. He told me that the funding allocated each year was contingent on the amount of money that had been spent during the previous year.
Therefore, there was a great incentive to spend as much money as possible each year in order to secure the greatest possible funding from central government.
Like myself he felt like there was a lot of unnecessary waste. For example, he mentioned that on one particular unnecessary road scheme the contractors had quoted two million pounds for the work. Then midway through the job the price suddenly escalated to eight million pounds. He told me that it was casually waved through without any complaint whatsoever by the department.
I realised that the problem was stemming from the then Labour government who was sanctioning this ridiculous wastage. They were in affect dishing out huge sums of money to local authorities for fatuous and annoying road schemes such as ABITS.
Therefore, I was relieved to read that the new coalition plans to axe £309 million pounds in grants to local authorities for local road schemes.
Sadly it is too late to save the lovely subway in Headington, which is not in the least bit dark, but beautifully painted. It is being filled in to make way for bus lanes.
Thank goodness all this road madness is going to come to an end soon, with the new coalition.
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