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April 09 posts
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lgilmore | 
03 April 2009 at 11:25 | 490 views
Last week David Heath MP and I met with the Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, to discuss the maintenance plans for the key A303 Trunk Road.
A few months ago, the Highways Agency published plans for a complete closure for some 14 weeks of a stretch of the A303 from Willoughby Hedge to Mere. This would have involved a staggeringly large diversion off the A303 from Yeovil, up through Shepton Mallet and Frome, and back down to the A303 via Warminster!
There was understandable concern about the extent of the likely disruption, and David and I raised our concerns with Lord Adonis a couple of months ago when we were seeing him to talk about South West Trains’ misguided plans to cut staffing at their stations.
Lord Adonis wisely asked for the plans to be re-worked, and last week David Heath and I were briefed on the conclusions, along with a few other local MPs.
The new plan is somewhat better because although the work is still going to take place over many weeks, the period of complete road closure is being shrunk from 14 weeks to just 5 weeks. The work is now going to take place on site on a 24 hours per day basis to reduce delays, and a lot of the work will be done during periods of overnight closure and temporary overnight two way signals.
However, there is still an issue about the signposted diversion routes, with the long northern recommended detour via Frome still in place! This diversion is so extreme that it is unlikely that many drivers would follow it, which creates the risk of diverted traffic rat running through all sorts of unsuitable roads. The Highways Agency has therefore promised to go back and look at the plans again, to see whether an improved solution can be arrived at.
Lord Adonis has also indicated that in mid April he is going to tour the country to have a look at the state of the English Railway network. The Minister is likely to make a short stop in Yeovil on this tour, and he has offered to meet me and others interested in rail improvement for a brief discussion. I will now try to arrange this with interested groups.
Last week I was back from London on Thursday evening, after hours in Committee debating the current Education Bill.
On Friday I had a busy day, including a visit to South Petherton Infants School, my first tour of the Branstons’ business at Seavington, and an Advice Centre in Yeovil.
On Friday evening I attended a Public Meeting in Martock which was organised by John Bailey, who is the local Prospective County Councillor for the Martock/Norton sub Hamdon/Stoke sub Hamdon area.
John had managed to pull together an impressive panel to discuss the current “Credit Crunch” and what needs to be done to protect our local economy. The meeting was chaired by (Lord) Paddy Ashdown, and other panellists included Graham Watson MEP, the Leader of the Liberal Parties in the European Union, local MP David Heath, and County Councillor Sam Crabb.
There was a good turn out for the meeting, and a wide range of issues were covered including: support for farming; helping small businesses to bid for public sector contracts; and indeed the future dualling of the A303.
This brought both David Heath and me back to the meeting that we had had just two days before with Lord Adonis. Although this meeting was only to discuss the re-surfacing of the A303, we raised with Lord Adonis the Government’s plans to dual this key regional economic artery.
The Government had been committed to dualling the A303 all the way down to Ilminster, and then to dualling the A358 up to the M5. But the Government seemed to have got cold feet about this project last year, and when Ministers announced that the planned tunnel at Stonehenge was too expensive they seemed to take the opportunity to put the whole dualling scheme on the backburner.
Somerset continues to have an inadequate transport infrastructure, both in relation to rail and road links. David Heath and I will continue to campaign at Westminster to give both a higher priority.
Ever,
David.
lgilmore | 03 April 2009 at 11:24 | 432 views
A large amount of expenditure on our local services is overseen at a local level, but the money is frequently allocated by central government.
A reasonable assumption would be that the Government would ensure that different parts of the country would receive the money that they are entitled to, but sadly this is not always the case.
This was highlighted to me recently, when I met the Chief Constable of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary – Colin Port. Colin mentioned that our local police are receiving significantly less funding than they should be from the Government, and that this directly affects our ability to properly staff our local police force.
When I returned to Parliament, I decided to put down a series of parliamentary questions to see if I could establish how big the funding “hole” is. Within a short period of time the Home Office came back to me with a table showing the amount of money which they calculated that each police force in the country should be receiving, as well as a further list of statistics to show how much each police authority will actually receive.
Avon and Somerset constabulary is estimated to need some £191.7 million in 2008/09, but it is only going to receive £179.7 million. In other words, our area will receive £12 million less in funding for the police than even the Government thinks is appropriate.
This is the equivalent of some 300 extra police officers a year – extra resources which could be making a real difference in our area. This is particularly annoying when we consider just how stretched the police are in many of our most rural areas – where response times are often well below the national and local targets.
Avon and Somerset comes out as the fourth most underfunded police force in England – lagging behind only the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.
The problem is that although the Government thinks that we should be receiving a lot more money, it applies a “dampening mechanism” to ensure that it takes a long period of time to transfer the money from overfunded to underfunded parts of the country – in other words, the unfairness is allowed to persist for many years. For example, London has £35.3 million more than it should be receiving, and Northumbria receives an extra £34.2 million. Both areas will be overfunded for many more years – at our expense!
Schools funding is also adversely affected, with pupils receiving hundreds of pounds less each year in Somerset Schools compared with the rest of England. This is very unfair, and can mean that similarly sized schools receive funding differences of up to £500,000 in different parts of the country – for no obvious or fair reason.
There urgently needs to be a review of the schools funding formula to allocate cash to schools in a more rational way. There is also a need to ensure that high levels of disadvantage receive extra funding whether they are in urban or rural parts of the country. At present, the system for funding disadvantage is unfair and arbitrary.
Local councils also find that Government funding of new initiatives can be rather dotty. For example, the “free” transport for senior citizens is supposed to be paid for by central government, but it has turned out to be far more expensive than expected.
And the Government’s “free swimming” initiative has allocated money by local government area without regard to where the facilities actually are and where the costs are going to fall.
There needs to be a fundamental overhaul and review of funding systems for the police, schools, the NHS and local council services. And once these reviews have carried out their work, the Government needs to ensure that the conclusions are acted upon. Billions of pounds are allocated on a national basis in this way, and it is vital that the mechanisms are fair and are seen to be fair. It is also important that if local services are going to be held to account for their success in delivering, then this should be on the basis of a having the resources which are needed.