BRF blasts Govt
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ROAD IMPROVEMENTS in the metropolitan counties will be less achievable if the Government's present ideas for life after the abolition of the counties are left unaltered, the British Road Federation has told Cabinet ministers.
The normally pro-Conservative BRF has joined the growing list of organisations which believes the present plans are a backward step, and has told Environment Secretary Patrick Jenkin and Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley that they would delay road improvements and increase, rather than decrease COStS.
It is not calling for retention of the metropolitan counties, rather for an overhaul of the plans for restructured local government, but it has praised the counties' record of road improvements. The counties have improved upon the performance of their predecessor highway authorities and have been hindered more by lack of finance than by lack of commitment to road building, according to BRF.
But it is calling for a higher level of road investment, and says that the Government is not directing its efforts towards such an end.
A switch to district councils, as proposed by the Government, will diminish the county inspired accent on strategic road development, and it wants the Government to implement specific legislation to ensure that this does not happen.
A solution, according to the BRF, would be to create a joint board of district councils, with representatives of central Government and transport or business added, to maintain a strategic highway policy.
But, unlike the Road Haulage Association, it is opposed to this being added to the responsibility of the reconstituted passenger transport authorities there, as it wants quite distinct funding.
In the letter to the ministers, BRF chairman Tony de Boer has sought Government assurances that road schemes already planned will be unaffected by the changes in local government.
It wants the Government to use reserve powers to ensure that road schemes will neither be delayed nor abandoned if disputes arise between district councils, nor should boundaries be allowed to impede schemes.
BRF wants "effective" co-ordination of traffic management despite the absence of formal co-ordination from the Government's plans, and it wants the present standards of specialist staff to be preserved when their work is delegated to district councils.