Lancashire County Councillor (Conservative) Keith Young has resigned from the LCC Cabinet, where he was the Member for Highways and Transport, just days after news that the Department for Transport (DfT) has ordered the council to stand down its preparations for the proposed Heysham M6 Link road. Read our report here…
The new coalition government’s Spending Review has meant that all major road-building schemes have had their approval withdrawn for reconsideration. The LCC policy of making any attempts to tackle Lancaster’s congestion problem, such as Park & Ride, conditional on acceptance of the Link Road scheme was hugely unpopular with local transport groups, who say that traffic studies show the congestion as being mainly due to traffic between the sister towns of Lancaster & Morecambe, the school run and inadequate public transport for commuters. This, they say, would not be solved by a motorway link intended to serve Heysham motorway traffic. Lancaster City Council declined to support the £140 million scheme.
The Council also faced severe criticism for its policy (or lack of it) on gritting pavements during the icy weather last winter, when for the most part pavements were left untreated and there was a huge rise in falls resulting in injuries and deaths because of the icy conditions, as reported in Virtual-Lancaster in January this year. Read more..
Cllr Young told the Lancashire Telegraph, “Things were getting unsustainable. My wife and I decided it was time to ease off, and the only way I could do that was by giving up my cabinet job.
“I am the wrong side of 70 and I shouldn’t be charging around the way I do.”