| LOCAL ROAD SCHEME DEBATED IN PARLIAMENT |
| Thursday, 17 May 2007 | |
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Last week (8th May) in Parliament's Westminster Hall, in an example of cross party co-operation, John Pugh joined forces with West Lancs MP Rosie Cooper, to push for funding for the Ormskirk By-Pass which would improve access to Southport, reduce journey time between the hospitals and take pressure of Ormskirk town centre The scheme is relatively low down in the current regional priority list for which over £700m of government funding is available but is too expensive for Lancashire to fund alone. As John Pugh put it : "The problem is that there is a substantial omission in the system. Good, popular, needed and affordable schemes that do not have pan-regional significance get left out of the system altogether, particularly if they cost more than £5 million, which I think is the current limit. If they cost less than that, they can be done by the local transport authority, but if they cost more they must go to regional prioritisation."  Rosie Cooper was more optimistic saying "we have secured a promise from the Minister that sub-regional priorities will be considered again in 2009. The county council should be congratulated on working with us and ensuring that the scheme will go ahead for planning permission in July this year. It has even allocated a spot for a public inquiry and done the environmental impact study. The message for the Minister is that we will be ready and waiting to make the scheme work." The minister who replied to the debate, Stephen Ladyman, held out hope suggesting that Lancashire were not prevented in from doing the scheme from their own resources even though it cost over £5M and that changes in the Regional Prioritisation Scheme might mean that a scheme like this could be done sooner rather than later. Referring to recent comments from the Hospital Trust John pointed out that: "We seem to be on the cusp of some interesting developments. The chief executive of the Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust wrote very recently to the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) and me, suggesting that the problem needs to be addressed. "We have been addressing it for some time, but none the less his intervention is helpful. He is suggesting that the hospital trust will not sit back any longer and simply expect transport arrangements to take place, but consciously wants to work with others to try to accommodate such arrangements. That attitude reflected that of the previous chief executive, who had a particular interest in transport. Ultimately, the economic and health cases stack up, and the issues connected with the health service are increasingly to do with access." After the debate John Pugh said. "The government response was not unhelpful and they got the message that neither Rosie nor I would give up but there are still funding obstacles to get over. Hopefully though Lancashire County Council will take note of what the minister said and will have gone into problem solving mode." Get the full text of the speech here.
View video clip here. More about Westminter Hall debates can be found here. |