Rotherwas Access Road
Work has commenced on the £12m Rotherwas Access Road, partly funded by the unelected regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands (AWM). [1]
AWM is part-funding the access road through a £9.5m “Rotherwas Futures” project [2] but the scheme has already been refused funding by the Department for Transport because it does not offer value for money. [3]
A report published last week and endorsed by Labour ministers describes regional quangos such as Advantage West Midlands as a waste of money and suggests that they should be abolished. The cost of regional development agencies, regional assemblies and regional government offices to the taxpayer is £360m per year – when other regional quangos are taken into account the cost is closer to £500m. [4]
West Midlands NO! Campaign spokesman, Stuart Parr, says “There is no reason why unelected regional quangos like AWM should be in control of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money when we have elected councils that are perfectly capable of spending our money for us. If we don’t like the way our councils spend our money we can get rid of them at the next local election. With AWM we can’t do this – the whole organisation is unelected and unaccountable to members of the public. Spending £9.5m of our money on something the Department for Transport has said is a waste of money is wrong.”
Stuart Parr
West Midlands NO! Campaign
07973 286118
[1] http://www.24dash.com/localgovernment/17846.htm
[2] https://herefordshire.gov.uk/council_gov_democracy/news/28142.aspp
[3] http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/regional/strategy/rfa/response/lettertothewestmidlandsregio3778?page=1
[4] http://www.westmidlandsno.org.uk/wordpress/?p=160West Midlands NO! is a non-partisan campaign group opposed to regional government in the West Midlands. The campaign believes that regional quangos such as the West Midlands Regional Assembly and Advantage West Midlands should be abolished and the powers, responsibility and funding they have given back to elected local authorities. The campaign has a petition on the Prime Minister’s website – http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/regionalquangos
PRESS RELEASE – Rotherwas Access Road
! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.
Regional Assemblies – what are they all about… another layer of government not required.
Thanks, Wonko