The South West Regional Assembly has released £27M in unspent funding allocations for major road maintenance projects.
Dorset County Council is the biggest beneficiary, set to receive £18M towards a £26M project to rebuild 10.5km of the A338 principal road, after the region under-spent the money earmarked for new, major schemes.
Dorset CC told Surveyor it had originally bid for extra funding for the reconstruction project in 2006, but was told in 2007 to seek the money from the regional funding pot, which was worth £87M in 2007/08.
Andy Shaw, transport policy manager at Dorset, said the A338, the county’s most heavily-trafficked route, was deteriorating faster than the £1M the highway authority was spending annually on reactive maintenance could prevent.
Members of the South West’s regional transport board criticised diverting to road repairs money meant for major new schemes to improve connectivity and underpin economic growth.
But Shaw said: ‘This is a vital route, carrying 56,000 vehicles each day at the northern end, and serving Bournemouth and its airport from the A31 trunk road. If the carriageway surface was to fail, this would harm the local economy.’
Somerset County Council will receive £4M towards the £6M partial reconstruction of the A358 linking the A303 trunk road to the M5 at junction 25, while Torbay Council will be given £4M to improve a key junction to reduce congestion
The regional transport board allocated the money on the basis that the schemes could be completed by the end of 2010/11, and no higher priority transport projects were capable of being delivered.
It also agreed its funding advice for the period up to 2018/19, with £248M for public transport projects focused on the ‘strategically-significant cities and towns’ and £255M for road schemes to improve connectivity. The majority of schemes are local authority-led, although £30M was proposed to be allocated to the Highways Agency to study alternatives to the proposed road improvement at Stonehenge, scrapped by the Department for Transport
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