True Costs to Taxpayers

11.31.00am GMT Mon 1st Feb 2010

Cuts will be made to road safety, bridge maintenance and a number of other areas.

The true cost of the Rugby western relief road has started to appear.

Warwickshire's Tory controlled Cabinet received a report that shows an increase of £12.1 million was the latest estimate for this project started at over £55 million. Cuts are also planned to balance the books, and will be made to road safety, bridge maintenance and a number of other areas.

Jerry Roodhouse at the Cabinet meeting called on the Cabinet to give assurances that spending would not increase any further. He called for the release of the report into the findings as to what went wrong and allow audit members to look at it. In reply, no assurance was given by the Tory Cabinet and the report will be kept private.

Jerry Roodhouse said that "This is a whitewash, public money has been spent and little or no account is being made to Councillors or to the taxpayers in the county. It is in the public interest that all the facts come out and the taxpayers of the County see what went wrong and why cuts are being made to local valuable road services."

Cuts in the Transport capital programme are as follows:

Roads maintenance £1.70m

Bridge Maintenance £2.23m

Integrated Transport £1.67m