Cllr Mitchell

Labour City Councillors are condemning the "appalling waste of local residents’ taxes" with the scrapping of the Old Shoreham Road cycle lane scheme by the Conservative Council. Sixty-six percent  (1,930) of the 3,000 respondents supported the introduction of the scheme and 62% (1,377) of drivers agreed with its implementation.

The Leader of the Council, Mary Mears, announced last month that the scheme would not be going ahead before the results of the public consultation had been made public.

According to a Labour spokesman:
"The results of the consultation, completed in October 2009, have been kept under wraps by the Conservative Council for five months despite several calls by opposition councillors for them to be made public.

"It was only revealed that nearly £100k of tax payers’ money was wasted on the scheme after the Labour Group Leader submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the Council, which also revealed that over half of the total cost of the consultation was spent on external consultants."
 
Cllr Gill Mitchell, Leader of the Labour Group said,
“It is outrageous for the Conservative Administration has hidden the true results of the public consultation for so long, simply because the views of the local residents do not reflect their own prejudice against cycling.

"The Conservatives were never committed to this scheme in the first place, which begs the question as to why they ever embarked upon it, wasting nearly £100k of tax-payers’ money in the process.

"The Tory Council is urging the big organisations in the city to sign up to the 10:10 carbon reduction pledge but  is not prepared to take the key decisions needed to help them achieve their objectives in relation to offering more sustainable travel for their staff.”
 
For more information about Labour view:
www.brightonhovelabour.com