York’s Conservative councillors have strongly condemned Labour’s announcement last night that they will slash funding ringfenced for the northern ring road dualling, to use it to fund a staggering £18 million gap which has emerged due to the mishandling of changes to York Station area by Labour and their Lib Dem predecessors. Labour also want to take money ringfenced for Castle Mills Bridge to fund their blackhole; this bridge (part of the Piccadilly area supposedly being redeveloped) is another area where Labour and Lib Dem incompetence has seen no delivery just fortunes spend on consultants and supposed planning costs and a £1 million write off as Labour cut the Lib Dem plans for a multi storey car park on St George’s Field.
We note the news of the cuts was sneaked out just before 6pm on a night when the focus of much of York was on a huge game for York City and further that the news was broken as a Labour Party release not City of York Council, to enable even more spin than normal!
Conservative councillor Chris Steward said
We have been urging Labour to get on with the ring road dualling since planning permission was given more than a year ago, but it has instead been delay after delay. Labour are now proposing a bizarre reorganisation of funding which will see ever more money spent on consultants and planning rather than delivery. The claim by Labour that they ‘could’ get back money they are taking from the ring road dualling from future housing developers is highly misleading and it is notable they do not use the word ‘would’.
Residents deserve so much better, we have moved from a Lib Dem administration whose Executive Member for Transport literally opposed the ring road being dualled to a Labour Executive which is divided on whether it supports it but just looks riddled with incompetence
We absolutely would not start from this point and blame Labour’s failure to get on with the ring road dualling for much of the cost issue but if there was a choice we would prioritise dualling the ring road which will have tangible benefits for transport in York rather than the station makeover as is where many of the benefits are much less cost effective. However York residents will now face many more years of delays because of Lib Dem and Labour’s anti car agenda.
