County Council's £4.2m Road Investment Targeted Away from Bedford

3.57.27pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 27th Oct 2006

Bedford Borough Liberal Democrat Councillors are demanding to know why the County Council's much-vaunted extra investment in road improvements is not being used on Bedford's roads.

Bedfordshire County Council has launched a large advertising campaign emphasising its commitment to spend £59 million on the County's roads this year, £4.2 million of which is new funding. However, none of this new funding has been spent on roads in the "Section 42" area which covers most of Bedford, Kempston, Elstow, Biddenham and Bromham.

Commenting on the issue, Liberal Democrat Borough Group Leader Cllr Michael Headley said:

"Here in Bedford and Kempston we are experiencing the bizarre situation of seeing advertisements on the sides of buses trumpeting lots of new investment in the county's roads, while those buses are driving along roads on which not a single extra penny has been spent.'

It is indefensible that residents of Bedford and Kempston have to suffer from continued under-investment in their roads while efforts are made elsewhere in the county to bring roads up to an acceptable, safe standard. At the current rate of works in the urban area it will take 66 years, almost a lifetime, for every road to be resurfaced. It is time that the County Council started to give local residents in Bedford and Kempston a fair deal to rectify this unacceptable situation."