Friday 21 November 2014

Its been a while

Over a year since my last post and a frustrating year at that. Locally we seem to have made very little progress, but nationally the picture is looking very much more positive particularly in towns. In my next blog post I will try and sum up some of the key national highlights during 2014 (a long blog methinks!)

I will use the rest of this post to update on Leicestershire progress - a much shorter blog...!

In November 2013 County Councillor David Snartt spoke at the  Environment and Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee making the case that the Council should be reviewing their speed limit policy in the light of DfT guidance issued early in 2013. The points were well made but the response from the Highways official was dismissive, inaccurate and incomplete. I had expected that the Scrutiny Committee would ask some probing and challenging questions and that there would be some debate. Alas no they accepted what the officer said at face value and quickly moved on with no apparent decision or outcome.

We have basically then spent the last year trying to get them to review the "decision" not to hold a scrutiny review, enlisting the help of David Snartt and my own county councillor Ivan Ould. We had been promised a meeting with the member for Highways Peter Osborne but this meeting never seemed to get arranged or was cancelled.

Finally we were told in October 2014 that we did not need to meet with Peter Osborne and that the matter would be referred to Scrutiny. David Snartt wrote to the (new) chair of the Scrutiny Committee on 20th October. We have heard nothing since despite chasing.

So a year on we are not much further forward - all very frustrating

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