Tories Can't Pretend Abingdon Traffic Nothing To Do With Them

12.00.00am GMT Thu 9th Nov 2006

The two Liberal Democrat County Councillors from Abingdon, Cllrs Lesley Legge and Alan Bryden, have written to the Abingdon Herald setting out how closely involved the Conservatives have been with the decisions on the Abingdon Traffic Scheme. This comes after a disgraceful attempt by the Tories to pretend that any problems are the fault of the Lib Dem Vale Council, rather than the Tory-run County Council. They said:

"As Cllr Legge stated two weeks ago the AbITS project is not completed. Cllr Sandy Lovett in his letter last week seems to forget that it was in fact an all party agreement headed and financed by the County Council. The project Steering Group included input from the Vale, the Town, the Chamber of Commerce and other interested residents and was widely consulted upon. After 2001, when the County Council was run by a Conservative - Lib Dem joint administration, the Steering Group was chaired by Councillor Roy Tudor Hughes, the highly respected Conservative member for Dorchester, until his retirement due to ill health when he was replaced as chairman by Councillor David Robertson, the current Conservative Cabinet Member for Transport.

"The statement that the main objective of AbITS is to drive traffic away from Abingdon town centre is a travesty of its 14 objectives. The overall vision was one which considered Abingdon as an historic town, as an attractive place to live and as a viable cultural, shopping, tourism, leisure and employment centre. This was agreed with all-party support.

"Its implementation is now being carried out by the current Conservative administration of the County Council, and the issue that Cllr Martin Smith raised was that the important Steering/ Monitoring Group meetings, which were always held in public, have been stopped by the Conservatives.

"We note that Councillor Robertson appeared on the Bill Heine programme and on TV last week apologising for the way the town centre scheme has been introduced."