The state of Flintshire’s roads are down to three main factors:
- Lack of money spent on maintaining them;
- Institutional failures in carrying out repairs, and
- Heavier vehicles causing more damage than ever before.
Flintshire People’s Voice does not believe this is an unsolvable problem.
We will shake up the highways department, improving contractor management practices, and ending overspends and delays that have plagued the council in recent years. The council spent £200,000 on a new machine to repair potholes – only for it to be sat idle for months due to a lack of qualified staff, then again because the council didn’t have any tarmac for it. If the human race can put people on the moon, it is not beyond our abilities to plan road maintenance effectively.
We believe that drivers are willing to pay for well maintained roads, and we call on the UK Government, which collects motoring taxes, to ensure that adequate funds from these are passed to local authorities to maintain roads. Since 2010, as damage to roads has grown, local government budgets have been squeezed, with more of your taxes hoarded by Westminster rather than returned to our area. In power, Flintshire People’s Voice will take responsibility for ensuring that the council acts effectively and efficiently to fix potholes, and we will push relentlessly for Westminster to take responsibility too. We will not let them off the hook by increasing council tax further to fund road maintenance which people rightly expect their motoring taxes to cover.
FPV supports the principle that residential areas should have 20mph speed limits – something most people in Flintshire also back for their own street. However, we call for a sensible approach to assessing arterial roads for 30mph speed limits – something Flintshire Council has failed to put in place. Welsh Government rules have always allowed for more exemptions than Flintshire has granted, and other councils have taken the opportunity to set sensible limits and exemptions. In power, FPV will empower local communities to determine speed limits democratically, reflecting the will of local people and returning power to you, rather than taking a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.
FPV recognises that disabled road users often have to jump through hoops when applying for a blue badge from the council. We are firmly committed to streamlining this process and will work with disabled people to redesign it with applicants at its heart.