Julian Updates Councillors on Ring Road Upgrade Funding Situation
November 19, 2013
Last week, Julian attended a special meeting of the City of York Council’s Corporate and Scrutiny Management Committee, in which he answered questions from Councillors on his efforts to secure funding for improvements to the northern outer ring road.
Julian explained to Councillors that under the current Government, transport infrastructure funding streams have been simplified and decentralised. Under the previous government there were 26 different funding streams which were tightly controlled by central government. However, due to reforms made by the Department for Transport, to which Julian is a Parliamentary Private Secretary, there are now only 4 main funding streams and the onus is much more on local authorities to work together to bid for funding.
Reflecting on the meeting, Julian said:
“I was delighted to be the first MP to attend one of the Committee’s meetings in a very long time and I enjoyed discussing the important issue of the future of our northern outer ring road with some of the City’s Councillors.
“I have for some time now been vocal in my belief that the ring road is the main barrier to economic growth in our City and without significant improvements I have little doubt that congestion will get worse, particularly if the Council are successful in their ill-thought through proposals for 16,000 new homes in the greenbelt, including over 4000 to the north of Clifton Moor.
“Transport infrastructure funding has now been devolved and simplified and if we are ever going to achieve the dualling of the ring road we desperately need, the Council must work with other local authorities and local enterprise partnerships from both North and West Yorkshire. I hope the Councillors in attendance took that very clear message away with them.”
Pictured: Julian at last week’s Council meeting.
