Lochaber can ‘expect’ its fair share of extra £20m spending on roads
Lochaber’s roads can expect to see a ‘fair share’ of the extra £20 million in capital spending announced as part of Highland Council budget proposals, due to be discussed today (Thursday) at a special meeting in Inverness.
This is according to Councillor Allan Henderson, Caol and Mallaig, speaking to the Lochaber Times following Highland Council’s announcement of what would be its biggest ever single investment in roads with an extra £20 million capital contained in its budget proposals for the year 2020/21.
The budget proposals were announced by budget leader Alister MacKinnon at a press conference at Highland Council headquarters last week.
To support the investment in roads, there are proposals to increase council tax by 4.84 per cent (just over £1 per week for those households on Band D) – which is broken down to three per cent to balance the budget and 1.84 per cent for investing in roads.
Council tax reduction recipients will continue to be protected (generally Bands A-C). The increase would enable a fund of £20 million for capital schemes and an additional £1.3 million of annual revenue for road maintenance.
Councillor Henderson said if this proposal for extra roads investment was accepted by all the councillors, or at least a majority, it would allow the council an opportunity to address the imbalance of funding allocated to roads for many years. ‘By investing £1 million in capital funding up to £20 million can be spent over the next two years in an effort to deliver resurfacing rather than remedial patching which has a very short life,’ Councillor Henderson said.
‘I would expect Lochaber to get its fair share of the allocation which, going by the current formula, would generate just short of £2 million along with a further share of revenue funding for cyclical maintenance. It is fair to point out that some of the £2 million would be used for modern plant which allows our workforce to deliver a better surface.
‘The benefit of this extra money is that it’s purely for road repairs and not gobbled up, as the normal budget is, for winter maintenance and ongoing repairs, as well as gully clearing and weather events. I would expect to see long-desired projects such as resurfacing in Mallaig, Morar and Caol centres being delivered through this finance stream, just as I am sure my other Lochaber colleagues will have pet projects.’
Leader of the council Margaret Davidson commented: ‘This budget is a road to recovery for the council. We need to build our reserves for a sustainable future, invest in redesign in order to transform the council, and make substantial improvement to our roads.’
Mr MacKinnon added: ‘These are ambitious budget proposals which also seek to invest in people, skills, plant and places. The budget has also been shaped to deliver sustainability, to fund work to achieve efficiency and improvement, to restructure our services to enable change and address climate change, storm damage and future resilience.’