Tag Archives: West Lancs

West Lancs

Speed limits to be cut on 84 roads across Lancashire

I spotted this today: Speed limits to be cut on 84 roads across Lancashire, a report in the Lancashire Telegraph stating that a two-year County Council study of all the county’s A and B roads has recommended new speed limits for 84 stretches of road.

The newspaper report goes on to say that 13 will be cut in West Lancashire.

This is a different initiative to the reduction in national speed limits that I posted about yesterday, and taken together should make the roads in West Lancs even safer. Once I get a copy of the report I’ll post which roads are recommended for speed changes.

UPDATE:

This is due for discussion at the Lancashire Local meeting on Thursday, agenda here. Scroll down to item 10 on the agenda and you’ll find all the information.

Interesting to see that this is a scheme that has been worked on for the past two years and that it will take up to another two years to be implemented, so not the fastest turnaround ever. The work was kicked off following guidance from the government (“Setting Local Speed Limits” is available on the dti website here), which itself was the result of a number of years work.

These things take a long time to go from national review, to guidance, to local review to implementation, but it will be worth it in the end.

Local Politics, West Lancs

West lancs services to be slashed in budget?

Bill Taylor, the Chief Executive of West Lancs Council writes occasionally in the localgov website. He writes the following in his latest article District View: Has CPA had its day?

I argued in this column recently that the days of step change improvement are finished, finito, gone for the foreseeable future – the notion that across the piece we can get substantially more for less is plainly ‘tosh’; (obviously we will continue to seek to make efficiency gains when we can but these are not going to bridge the massive financial gaps in councils budgets).

We are, therefore, in a period of retrenchment where services will have to be reduced particularly in non-priority/statutory areas. (my emphasis)

The Council is drafting it’s budget for 09/10 which will be announced in next month’s meeting. Bill leaves us with no doubt that there will be cuts – and gives a good idea where they will be. If he’s citing non-statutory, then I expect big cuts in leisure.

What’s more worrying is that he cites “non-priority areas”. This is arm-waving stuff, what’s a priority today could be dropped tomorrow if they don’t like it. Certainly the Tories in West Lancs have never liked being involved with improving health – they see it as something for the PCT to do. They tried dropping the doctor referral scheme a couple of years ago (and then brought it back after an outcry). I expect that they’ll try something similar again this year.

For the Chief Exec to say that there isn’t any further scope for step change improvement shows how low the Council’s ambition has sunk. To dismiss the idea so glibly has to be a concern to all Council Tax payers in the District and I hope he is put on the spot about it at forthcoming meetings.