Response to press releases on Transport (27th July)

Comment from David Munro;

“In his recent press releases regarding the Transport Coordination Centre and spending on roads Cllr. Doran makes a number of errors which seriously distort the situation.

As Mr. Doran should know, the Transportation Coordination Centre has been up and running for some time, and is already delivering the benefits that he mentions. This was pointed out to him and his colleagues during the Full Council meeting at Kingston on Tuesday, where only one of their number appeared to be aware of its existence. It is true that we want to go further than we have, but we always want to go further than we have – we are dedicated to continuous improvement and delivering improved services for our residents.

The Transportation Coordination Centre is full of hard-working staff who are committed to fulfilling the aims of the TCC, and it is a shame that some members of SCC appear unaware of their work.

I should hope that in future he will check his facts before making statements that denigrate the County Council and its hard-working staff.

Cllr. Doran also mentions underspends, but as he should know all underspends were carried forward into the next year’s budget, and we are still delivering on a number of schemes which will be of great benefit to the people and road-users of Surrey. Not a penny has been lost – in fact we have recently allocated £1m more to the transport and highways budget.

With regard to BDR it should be remembered that the Labour Government underfunded us to such an extent that radical action was necessary in order to protect front-line services and keep the Council Tax increase at a reasonable level. Whilst the Conservative administration, working with officers, proposed a far-reaching review of services that maintained services whilst cutting costs the Liberal Democrats sat on their hands, proposed nothing and merely carped from the sidelines.

The BDR was difficult, and we had to take a number of difficult decisions, but Conservatives have never shirked from difficult decisions. Had we followed Cllr. Doran and his fellow Liberal Democrats’ approach to the funding shortfall we would have had to cut back on front-line services. They should recognise that without the BDR we would have had fewer libraries, much less money available for highways, cuts in home-to-school transport and would have been unable to deliver services to the people of Surrey.

We do recognise, however, that there are areas in which we need to improve, and we are doing everything we can do deliver those improvements. All Conservative Group Members are striving to make Surrey an even better County to live in than it already is. It would be nice is all political parties could help”.