§ Mr. Alisonasked the Minister of Transport on what date or dates he wrote to the West Riding County Council asking for cuts to be made in proposed expenditure on local road programmes; what percentage cuts were sought; and what categories of project were specified.
Mr. Bob BrownOn 26th January, 1968, a Circular was sent to all local authorities in England asking them to reduce by at least 15 per cent. their planned expenditure on roads—other than grant-aided expenditure on installations of lighting and improvements on principal roads—during the financial years 1968–69 and 1969–70. The reductions related specifically to expenditure on the maintenance of principal and other local authority roads, the improvement of non-principal roads and similar expenditure, both capital and current, on car parks, highway depots and plant, and the lighting of roads.
On 5th August, 1968, the divisional road engineer informed the West Riding County Council that it would be necessary to re-arrange the programme of road schemes without a cut in expenditure to take account of the increased cost of some of them.