Richard Baum

Last night’s Prestwich LAP contained one gigantic disappointment - the list of roads identified as most in need of repair, and the frankly laughable amount of money given over to repair them.

As in previous years, the top dozen roads are identified. These, remember, are the least well-maintained roads, the ones with most pot-holes, cracks, loose paving stones and all the other hazards and unpleasantness that makes driving or walking down them dangerous.

The total estimated cost to repair all twelve is £596,000. The total budget allocated to fix Prestwich roads this year is just £108,000. That’s only 18% of the money needed to fix even the twelve most needy! That figure of £596,000 doesn’t even consider the 13th worst road, let alone the 14th, or the 114th, or the countless other roads with holes and cracks.

We have less than one fifth of the money necessary to repair our dozen neediest roads, and this is a disgrace.

Six of the dozen roads have been held back from previous years because of funding problem. One of them, Fairway in Sedgley, will cost by itself nearly £50,000 more than the entire budget allocated for roads. In St Mary’s, Sunny Drive and Barnhill Drive have been identified as needing work, but if both of these schemes get the go-ahead, this will account for nearly half of the entire available budget.

This is a matter which Liberal Democrats will certainly be taking up at Council level, to try and convince the Council to provide more funding for roads which are verging on the dangerous. The costs of compensation for trips and falls must surely point to the dire need for investment. But at the moment the people of Prestwich are very badly done to when the cost of replacing the pavement alone on Parrenthorn Road in Holyrood is more than the whole budget for roads and pavements for the whole of Prestwich.

The decision on which roads get repaired will be made by the Town Centre Regeneration Group, which is a sub-group of the LAP. I will make representations to this group on behalf of residents, but unfortunately this grossly inappropriate funding means that many local people will be left sorely disappointed by a Conservative council failing to prioritise roads in a budget already cut to shreds by a Labour government.

Rick