What they asked - and what they were told

Yesterday we gave you the highlights from last Friday's Lincolnshire County Council meeting.
Today, we give you the local questions word for word, so you can see which of our County Councillors have taken the time to raise Boston issues in a way that the entire county representation can hear.
And you can hear the answers as well and see how the people who hold the keys to Boston's future regard our humble borough.
First came a question for the county's highways supremo Councillor William Webb , who was asked by Councillor Raymond Singleton-McGuire:-
"In light of the recent articles in the Boston papers by the Bypass Party, Councillors Ray Newell and Richard Austin, could Councillor Webb please explain why has LCC actually failed to honour its statutory and legal highway commitments to Boston, which Councillor Newell claims in his article to be the largest town in the county, with the road infrastructure that a sub regional centre requires. Could also any light be thrown on claims by Councillor Newell that Lincolnshire County Council actually apparently grabbed nearly 80% of the council tax that Boston council taxpayers contribute, which indeed, apparently over thirty years he claims could have built ten bypasses - I think we actually only need one.
"Councillor Webb, could you please identify also where the second bypass is that Councillor Newell refers to in Spalding in his article, and also a bypass for Stamford in fact Councillor Richard Austin informs me through the local paper that it is not the LDF (Local Development Framework) or his administration which is holding up the bypass for Boston - apparently this information is incompetent and naive it is the coastal st... (interruption) the coastal strategy ... (Chairman interrupts whoever is interrupting) Are these claims true, and if so what is Lincolnshire Council doing to progress the long awaited Boston Bypass?"
Councillor William Webb replied: "Deep down I think this question is actually asking how are road schemes funded? And in fact there are three main mechanisms. One is through the regional funding allocation, the second one is through growth points and the third point, part is through private investment. Let me talk immediately about Boston and say that a distributor road for Boston is int, int, integrally linked to land allocation through the immersion, emerging, local development framework and the transport strategy funding allocation was reviewed in 2009 and funding was reassigned to release £300,000 to assist Boston Borough Council to progress their local development framework to include a distributor road. That I think answers the first part of the question. Secondly as far as council tax is concerned only a very small proportion of the council tax collected actually goes towards highways - don't quote me on this, (!!) but I believe it's as low as six per cent of the pot that we collect of that actually goes towards maintenance of making sure that the roads themselves are maintained and the street lights have electricity to them erm but the point is that the rest of the council tax funding goes towards the provision of children's services, adult social care, fire and rescue service, waste disposal, library services etc. Highways only gets an infi, infinitesimal part of the council tax collected by the boroughs and districts. On the third point apparently we have bypasses springing up all over the county .... well I can tell you that this is not the case. We are working at the moment on a bypass for the eastern part of Lincoln. That will be funded from the regional allocation. we are also looking at a further scheme, it has to be said in Spalding, but this will be entirely on the back of large developments from the point of view of housing and also industrial development in Spalding - and it will be funded by that mechanism. As far as bypasses for other places, I've heard Stamford mentioned, (but) I can assure you at the moment that is no more than aspirational.
The second question concerning Boston came from Councillor Ramonde Newell, who sensibly used notes this time rather than last time's extempore speech, which caused some hilarity at the time.
He asked: "Will the risk to the people of Boston be increased, and their protection reduced with the removal of the flood warning sirens in Boston? The sirens protect the people of Boston 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. The sirens have a warning in all languages. The sirens have successfully warned of danger for very many years. Those at particular risk are children, the elderly, those with a disability or a mobility problem, the sick and the thousands upon thousands of foreign nationals in Boston. They, I understand speak 64 languages. I only know, personally one flood warden in Boston -- hundreds will be needed. Is this council guaranteeing to continue to warn and to protect all the people of Boston?"
A reply came from Councillor Eddie Poll, Executive Councillor for Economic Development, and although we promised word for word coverage, there was so much waffle, that we are forced to summarise.
The core of his response was to say: "The removal of the sirens in Boston is not as disastrous as Councillor Newell suggests that it could be. The flood warning system along the entire east coast is very old, very hit and miss . Nothing in new developments. If you happen to be sat in your house watching your foreign language TV programme because you're miles away from home, the chances of your being able to hear the sirens are very remote. The Environment Agency flood warning system will require people to sign up to the alerts but now it will require people to "sign out" I think this is a vast improvement to public safety. I don't see this as a downgrade. I see this as a vast improvement of everybody in Lincolnshire."
And, apropos of nothing in particular, Councillor Poll harked back to Councillor Singleton-McGuire's earlier questions.
"I have to say that the comments from the question to Councillor Webb about Boston quite struck me that there were certain parallels with Rome - in that, yeah, all roads allegedly lead to Rome - and I think that Boston thinks that all roads lead to Boston. I couldn't but help but extend that parallel a bit further and see that the current administration kinda reminds me of Emperor Nero"
Thanks for taking the trouble to turn up Eddie!


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