Traffic management leaves a lot to be desired in our town

THERE cannot be a single person living in or around Hinckley that is satisfied with how traffic has been managed – congestion, parking, speeding, road repairs etc.

What makes matters worse is that the occasional opportunities to implement some real improvements have been squandered and worse still the perpetrators make it clear that they are not prepared to change their ways.

There are two main reasons. Firstly, the whole area is managed by Leicestershire County Council, which is too remote and has no vested interest in doing what is best for residents here.

Secondly, success in the eyes of the county council is about spending money rather that spending it to best effect.

As long as they are able to tick a few irrelevant, undemanding boxes for Westminster they can escape any criticism about what they have done.

The backdrop over recent years has been all about austerity, so the question is - how do we (residents) ensure they spend our money wisely (or even not spend it at all if the case is not strong enough)?

The entire public sector (elected and non-elected) from the PM downwards is continually telling us that they are all accountable to you and me, but not one of them will tell us how to exercise the right.

You can contact the various organisations in different ways, but as soon as you touch on a sensitive topic openness and honesty quickly disappear in favour of evasiveness and prevarication.

If you have the mettle, you will end up in a complaints process which is internally managed and where even the final so-called independent stage is heavily biased in one direction.

To work through these artificially constructed barriers one has to be very determined, the reward for which is that the county council will just terminate the “dialogue” completely and unilaterally without fear of any repercussions. Being able to hold these people to account is therefore just a myth.

What we need is a local councillor (with any party affiliation) to take this on – not just over the issue of traffic management, but the broader problem of the way us taxpayers are regarded as irrelevant and with a fair degree of contempt. Alex Clarke by email