Tough Choices needed on highways budget proposals

Devon County Council is exploring a number of options to reduce its highways and traffic management budget by almost £7 million.

As part of the County Council’s latest Tough Choices consultation, which was launched in September, Devon is considering how to cut spending in 2014/15.

A number of highways budget proposals were put forward on the Tough Choices website last month, inviting comment from members of the public. This is ahead of more extensive public consultation in the new year, when further choices will need to be considered to help meet deeper spending cuts over the next few years.

Although the local authority has saved £100 million over the past four years, the prospect of further reductions in settlement from central Government mean it needs to save a further £110 million by 2017.

Among proposals which the county council is putting forward to reduce the 2014/15 highways budget by £6.9 million are: 

• Reducing the duplication of highway drainage and cleaning activities undertaken by Parish Lengthsmen and the routine annual programme by stopping the latter to save around £550,000 out of a current budget of almost £940,000.
• Targeting more frequent cleaning of identified problem gullies, rather than carrying out the annual gully emptying schedule which costs over £1.7 million. This could save in the order of £330,000.
• Street lighting costs around £4.3 million a year, 75% of which is energy costs. The County Council’s street lighting contractor currently responds to all reports of street lighting faults. As well as the savings the service is making on energy costs, if the contractor was only required to carry out repairs when two or more adjacent lights become faulty in a street, it could save around £270,000.
• More than £1.3 million a year is spent on cutting of grass verges on minor roads. Currently, a one metre strip of verge alongside the carriageway is cut once or twice a year in rural areas, depending on road category. If this was stopped on the minor road network, with only verge cutting at road junctions and bends continuing for visibility and safety reasons it would save £200,000.
• If non-essential road markings, such as SLOW markings, were no longer replaced unless there was a safety issue, around £186,000 could be saved from a budget of more than £1.1 million.

Councillor Stuart Hughes, Devon County Council Cabinet Member for Highway Management, said: “At this stage, these are just proposals which are yet to be agreed but the expected reduction in Government grant will leave us with no choice other than to make cuts. We are currently looking at all options to see how we can reduce our spending in our 2014/15 budget, while maintaining our capacity to carry out essential work on our road network.

“We have the biggest highway network of any local authority in the country, covering more than 8,000 miles, which illustrates the scale of the challenge we are facing. There’s no denying that difficult decisions have to be made which is why we want to people to give us their views.”

Other suggestions currently being reviewed include stopping the annual cleaning of cattle grids which could cut more than £80,000 from the budget; ending the provision of free stiles and gates to landowners with a public right of way and reduce vegetation clearance on “lesser used” paths could save around £65,000; while stopping the maintenance of variable message road signs and removing them when they become defective could save over £40,000.

In the New Year, Devon County Council will be asking residents for further views on what they feel the Council’s future priorities should be and how further spending reductions can be achieved in 2015/16 and 2016/17.

To view the proposals in more detail and to comment, visit www.toughchoices.co.uk