£7m paid out on Shrewsbury relief road
Saturday 22nd January 2011, 11:30AM GMT.
Nearly £7 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on designing and planning a Shropshire road which is unlikely to ever be built, highways chiefs admitted today.
The money spent on the proposed £100 million North West Relief Road in Shrewsbury covers a period from 1987 to December 31, 2010.
The figure does not include cash that was spent on preparatory work in the years leading up to that.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance today accused the council of “gambling” with taxpayers’ money. Charlotte Linacre, from the organisation said: “It is such bad news that nearly £7 million has gone completely to waste.
“The council should have ensured they invested in maintenance that provided real benefits to residents.
“This was a gamble with taxpayers’ money which has backfired.
“This outcome is unfortunate but more should have been done to curb costs at the planning stage.”
Laura Owen, spokeswoman for Shropshire Council, said: “The relief road has been part of the Integrated Transport Strategy in Shrewsbury for over 20 years.
“To date, around £6.7 million has been spent on buying land, ground investigation work and scheme design. If, at some point in the future, it is decided to abandon the scheme then the council can consider whether to sell any land it no longer required.”
Members of Shropshire Council’s cabinet this week agreed to abandon the project after officials claimed there was “very little prospect” of securing funding for the four mile bypass any time in the next decade.
But Martin Withington, head of transportation for the council, defended the spend on planning for the road and said it may be possible to re-look at the project in 10 or 15 years time.
By Russell Roberts
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Best you think again and start building it then else your going to have some very angry members of ther public knocking on the door of the council demanding the money back….
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Spot on Daz, I would hope that this waste of taxpayers money and investigated by the National Audit Office – either build it or prosecute those that waste public cash and continue to do so.
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Yet another rent-a-quote from the so called Tax Payers Alliance, which is not an alliance of ordinary taxpayers, but a lobby group.
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a lobby group for conservative party, now campaigning against conservative SCC LOL
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omg
idiots
the work will all be completely out of date in 5 years time as the traffic volumes will change and the specification for construction and materials will alter
so this is all gone, wasted, nothing, even if in 20 years time the road comes back on the agenda all this work will need to be repeated all over again at taxpayers expense
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Perhaps Charlotte Linacre could lend Shropshire Council her crystal ball – it would be so much easier to plan things with an accurate knowledge of what the future will bring.
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If Charlotte and her cronies are so clever and can see into the future why does she not win the lotto jackpot each week?
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Nice to see that SCC are taking an interest in reducing expenditure and saving money. I suppose the person responsible for this expenditure will promoted or will retire on a nice inflation busting index linked pension, rest assured tax payers your money is in good hands.
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7 million would pay for about 200 nurses or bin men a year
so remember when they cut your local school or take away your rubbish collections, this is not essential savings, this is political choices made by incompetent people who prefer to give our money to consultants to draw diagrams all day instead of delivering proper frontline services like emptying the bins
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It is FAR too late for complaint about anything Shropshire Council do by way of disgraceful waste of money.
It’s blatant disregard of the need to be economical with tax payers money will continue forever or until there is positive and well orchestrated action by members of the public.
The people of Shropshire are controlled by a council that is legendary throughout the UK for waste of everything from resources to money.
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7 million could have paid for the whole of shrewsbury to have cycle lanes, or free parking for all for years, or a whole new park and ride fleet, this is serious cash, spent on what – planning ?
outrageous
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the irony of those public sector bashers is that this would mostly have gone to private sector companies, environmental and engineering consultancies and massive infrastructure firms like Amey, Serco and Capita who a) prop up private pensions and b) employ private sector workers – so daily mail readers – ask yourself this, do you want more fat cat public workers taking the cream OR do you want private sector jobs in which case you need to support taxpayers investing in infrastructure and handing that money over to massive multinational engineering firms
either that or the council employs armies of “beurocrats” to do the same work
you cant have it both ways
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good point well made
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maybe next time they should do like pay on winning fees like the lawyers get ?
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public sector wasting money = news? its just business and usual for SCC despite recession
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you could build a whole road for that!
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it should be invoiced down to the penny so lets find out who pocketed the most from this, i bet its consultants, they always quote for a weeks work then end up being retained for years, this is the ruination of our public services in the uk generally, its a lack of contract management skills in the public sector and an inability to make judgements without reems of policy work before hand to inform their choice, no gut instant, no common sense and a niave belief that the consultants know best
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We discussed this a while ago – you hire consultants when you need specialist knowledge, saves you money because you don’t have to employ them full time. If you are building a road, you need to spend money on lawyers to buy land, you need to spend money on engineers to design the road. If you just draw a pencil line from Battlefield and tell people to start laying tarmac, the road would cost closer to a billion, after all the litigation flying at you.
The council publish plenty about what they are spending the money on on their website. It’s easy to read. Though it is clearly easier to rant and rave on a newspaper website without first doing any research.
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It might be worth pointing out that the Taxpayers’ Alliance are not exactly neutral on this issue.
Peter Roberts, who sits on the West Midlands Taxpayers’ Alliance ruling council ( http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/grassroots/2007/07/west-midlands-c-3.html# ), was voicing support for a NWRR on the Shropshire Star site in June 2009.
http://www.shropshirestar.com/latest/2009/07/23/how-will-relief-road-affect-town/ #16
Would it not be fairer to recognise that the Taxpayers’ Alliance lobbied for the ‘gamble with taxpayers’ money which has backfired’?
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It might be worth pointing out that the Taxpayers’ Alliance are not exactly neutral on this issue.
Peter Roberts, who sits on the West Midlands Taxpayers’ Alliance ruling council, was voicing support for a NWRR on the Shropshire Star site in June 2009.
http://www.shropshirestar.com/latest/2009/07/23/how-will-relief-road-affect-town/ #16
Would it not be fairer to admit that the Taxpayers’ Alliance lobbied for the ‘gamble with taxpayers’ money which has backfired’?
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i do hope those concerned have lined their pockets sufficiently to repay 7 million between them before they are jailed
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i suggest they do an FOI request about some of the other hair brain schemes this council has poured money into so far with zero results
flax mill any one?
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7 million! thats enough to build a new park and ride site or two, or to bridge the river severn to releive town centre traffic or probably enough to dual the A5 to Oswestry (which should be much more of a strategic priority) Why reduce journey times between wem and westbury, there are hundreds of thousands of vehicles going the other way, north south to oswestry – why focus on the west of shrewsbury which is unpopulated, untrafficked, rural, flood prone wetlands it makes no sense in the grand scheme of things traffic / journey wise
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i could have told you it would never happen from the outset, it was obvious that (rightly so) that safety risks firstly and then bottlenecks in Birmingham and London would always be a priority over little Shrewsbury, contrary to their beleif we are not the centre of the universe and the congestion is pretty minor
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shock – horror – shropshire council wastes our money – i know that already – its not really NEWs! they are useless with money – now vote them all out
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Ooops!
oh well never mind, plenty more money where that came from, i dont see why anyone should have to take responsibility for it, its no ones fault really, sometimes it just happens like that, dont worry it will be O.K.
C’est La Ve
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