| Topic: | Reply | |
| Posted by: | Gordon Southwell | |
| Date/Time: | 18/08/21 08:37:00 |
In a way what the funding is for doesn't really matter. The transport department of any council will always have been dependent on bidding for funding to central government for its operation. Pre-Covid Ealing had a much larger Local Implementation Plan but the money for this was taken away by the Department for Transport. It was replaced by the Gilligan inspired funding for these temporary schemes, the theory being was that councils should take the opportunity to introduce cheap but radical changes during the pandemic to take advantage of the drop in traffic levels to encourage active travel. Julian Bell was a true-believer so Ealing bid aggressively for this funding and got one of the highest amounts of any borough in London. As the materials for these schemes was low cost most of the money effectively goes to cover officer time. Even if there was no funding it still would be more expensive to make officers redundant than to keep them on. Therefore, if the government were saying it was only going to give Ealing money to repave the Uxbridge Road with yellow bricks, it would make sense operationally to bid for it. Without the funding the officers still have to be paid and this money would need to come from the council's own resources likely requiring a reduction of services. That is before you take into account the massive revenue boost given by the PCN revenue. Peter Mason gambled that he could extricate the borough from these measures without a punitive response from the government on the perfectly reasonable assumption that, if he could show they were deeply unpopular, the grant funding pipeline would remain open. It appears he is wrong. Unfortunately for him, the chances are that Julian Bell will be highlighting the very dubious looking traffic data commissioned by the council which shows that LTNs are an incredible success to Andrew Gilligan. |