Road Repairs Being Neglected

Potholes will be left unfixed in Fife because of raids on the road maintenance budget - that's according to a councillor.

Dave Dempsey, who leads the Tory group, says money's being diverted to cover a drop in income from selling recycled plastic.

And he's also angry that three quarters of a million pounds of roads cash is being spent doing up Kirkcaldy High Street that could come from a more relevant budget.

He said: "The movement of £957,000 is mainly due to re-prioritising the planned programme on Routine & Structural Maintenance in Transportation by £900,000 in order that the service achieves a balanced budget overall’.

This means that a shortfall in rubbish collection and recycling, notably a drop in income from selling recycled plastic, has been balanced by cutting road repairs.

Mr Dempsey added: Re-prioritising’ means putting it off till next year, to be paid for from within next year’s budget which won’t then pay for next year’s repairs. Ironically, just a few years ago this accounting exercise wouldn’t have been possible because Transportation and Environmental were separate services with separate budgets. Now they’re combined, the rules allow money to be shuffled from one part to another, so a drop in the price of plastic means more potholes left unfilled.

“The second hit came a bit further down the agenda when we were outvoted and the committee approved £750,000 for the next phase of improvements to Kirkcaldy High Street. Nothing wrong with that till you see how it’s to be paid for – partly from funding set aside for the High Street but mostly -another £400,000- from the ‘Safeguarding Our Infrastructure – Roads Maintenance Fund’. Previous raids on that fund included the infamous works outside the Adam Smith Centre, a project that could win awards for annoying the most people for the least gain.

"One of the Council’s flagship objectives is to “make Fife the Best Place to Do Business”. That’s good but it’s not clear that taking lumps out of the roads budget when there’s a £120million repairs backlog is the right way to go about it."