Free bus plans hit highway works

05 September 2007
 
York City Council is set to delay a number of highway maintenance schemes to help meet the cost of concessionary bus fares.

Financial projections show that the council is likely to overspend its annual budget by £774,000, mainly due to the forthcoming introduction of the updated free bus fare scheme next April. A report to the council warns that the shortfall will be met from the general budget, at the expense of road maintenance work. As such, members of the council will next week be asked to postpone highway maintenance schemes ‘until the financial situation is more clear’.

The amount of funding from government is more than £1M less than the amount needed to meet the council’s additional commitments for the scheme up to the end of the year.

Ann Reid, the council’s executive member for city strategy, said: ‘We’ve tried our best to increase resources in highways over the past few years, so we’re very unhappy that the maintenance schemes may be affected. ‘The Government is expecting council tax payers to fund a scheme which it devised in the first place. We have no idea what it will offer from April.’

She said another option was to increase the hourly rate for car parking in the centre, which ‘would be extremely controversial’. In April 2008 the scheme will be extended beyond the current boundaries to free travel throughout England for elderly and disabled people.

The Local Government Association warned in July (Surveyor 5 July 2007) that the scheme could descend into ‘chaos and confusion’ unless the Government announced how it would reimburse councils and disclose further details of the plan.

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