A Conservative Amendment brings forward additional highways spending for the next three years. At the Corporate Policy Committee last week, Councillors acknowledged that Cheshire East Council needs to invest more in its largest asset, the highways network.
Cllr David Brown (Con: Congleton East) warned Councillors, that Cheshire East needs to invest as much as it can, as soon as it can, in order to prevent future road closures on safety grounds.
His statement came as the Committee heard that the authority intended to include £7 million in its capital programme in 2022/3 for managing and maintaining highways with a further £4m earmarked for 2023/4 and £4m again in 2024/25. But Cllr David Brown suggested an amendment which would see that £4m in both financial years increased to £6m.
He also asked for a major review of highways and transport funding at local level in order to have strong evidence to inform further investment in future years and to lobby government to raise highways grant funding.
Cllr David Brown explained that the lower the investment in roads, the more the council had to spend on temporary repairs from the revenue ‘pot hole’ budget.
“Revenue monies spent on pothole repairs is very costly compared to planned repairs which are more cost effective and last between 10 and 20 times longer,” he added.
He said his amendment “offers the essential pump-priming needed to maintain a level of improvements that is necessary to maintain improvement in key problem stretches of the network”.
“This will enable targeted future investment after this period, to be better informed by the results of the highways review,” he said.
The additional investment would be paid for by borrowing.
But Cllr David Brown further explained that the borrowing costs will be funded from correlated savings over the three-year period, achieved in the revenue budget currently allocated for pothole repairs.
Highways committee chair Cllr Craig Browne (Alderley Edge, Ind) said he did have some reservations that the funding was largely reliant on borrowing and that DFT funding for road maintenance is totally inadequate. However he also stated that he did support the proposal in principle.
Cllr David Brown’s proposal was discussed by the Committee and formally raised as a budget amendment by Cllr Janet Clowes (Con; Wybunbury Ward) who invited Cllr Craig Browne (Alderley Edge, (Ind) and Highways Committee Chair) to second the amendment.
The Amendment was unanimously accepted by the corporate policy committee and will be voted on at full council when it considers the medium term financial strategy (budget) on February 24.
