A record of progress – a promise of more:

Conservatives set out key priorities for coming year

28/05/2010

With local elections in B&NES now less than a year away, local Conservatives have marked three years of achievement as the Council’s administration by setting out their top priorities for the next twelve months.

Conservative councillors in B&NES have said that significant progress has been made in addressing the issues that matter to local residents since the Conservatives formed the administration after the last local elections in 2007, but that much more still needs to be done.

Listing some of the key achievements of the last of the last three years, Conservatives have highlighted:

• Delivering balanced budgets with no deficit so that Council Tax rises have been reduced every year and are now at their lowest ever in B&NES.

• Delivering on the promise of ‘no more Bath Spa disasters’; ensuring the council’s major projects are completed on time and on budget and winning money back from the Bath Spa settlement for local residents.

• Improving day-to-day council services such as waste collections; introducing same-day waste collections to make recycling easier and improving the collection’s reliability, with recycling rates continuing to increase.

• Invested in road safety and local transport; doubling the budget for Safer Routes to School schemes, and investing almost £1 million a year in local Dial-a-Ride schemes and supported bus services.

• Improved services for the young and old throughout B&NES; including the completion of three Community Resource Centres, spending millions of pounds on Primary Schools renovations, and securing £2.5 million to improve play areas throughout the district.

Now local Conservatives have set 6 clear priorities which they are promising to deliver over the next year:

1. Deliver a Council Tax rise even lower than this year’s record low.

2. Resurface over 100 kilometres of local roads through an additional £3 million road maintenance investment, over and above standard action to fill individual pot-holes.

3. Introduce food-waste recycling collections to increase recycling rates even further.

4. Set a lower and more sustainable number of new houses to be built over the coming years, with a focus on developing Brownfield first and creating new jobs alongside housing.

5. Take further action to reduce the number of HGV’s travelling through Bath in a continued drive to tackle the city’s congestion.

6. Continue work on regeneration plans for Midsomer Norton, Radstock, and Keynsham, including progressing with development plans to secure the much-needed rejuvenation of Keynsham town centre.

 

B&NES Conservative Leader, Councillor Francine Haeberling, said:

“Nationally, Britain is witnessing a fresh start and the beginnings of real change under David Cameron’s new Government. Locally in Bath and North East Somerset, Conservative councillors have made strong progress on delivering the change residents want to see; delivering lower council tax rises and improving council services. But there’s much more work which still needs to be done.

“In less than a year’s time, local residents will have an important choice to make on who they believe can best address the serious challenges facing our area as we work our way out of the recession. That is why we have set out our top priorities for the next year - focussing on delivering even better local services while ensuring we keep public finances under control during tight financial times.”