I know this is a huge problem, and in truth it’s been an 18-month long mission to try and get the kind of funding we need to sort it. I know that our roads are simply not good enough. It's not something I'm willing to accept. I have a plan to sort it.
‘Fixing’ the roads across the region is something like a £3bn problem, but our budget is just £60-70m, so it’s a sizeable gap to say the least. I know that’s not good enough, and I know residents really want this sorting, which is why I’ve been trying to find ways to secure the extra funding we need.
I’ve literally been on an almost two year mission - but with some success.Through our regional devolution deal, I’ve now secured a £1.5bn Transport Fund, which will help us to invest in this issue and make much more progress. That’s really significant money, that is much needed.
That funding will be managed by a regional Mayor, an equivalent of Andy Street in the West Midlands, who will be elected this May to oversee that spending across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It’s not ring-fenced for roads, it’s for ‘transport’ generally, so we need to ensure we elect a Mayor who will prioritise the roads and invest in them, because this is a one-off, once in a generation opportunity to put some genuine massive investment in to them, and if we elect someone who spends the money on something else, then it will be gone.
I’m standing for that Mayoral role, and I’m doing that precisely because I want to sort the roads out. As I said, this has been an almost two year mission for me, to find a way to get the kind of new funding we need to tackle this issue. I could easily sit back, and moan about government funding, and do nothing, but that’s not my character. I’ve taken it on and I’ve been and secured the money from government myself. I even sought and negotiated the deal myself, precisely to deal with this issue. I really need your backing in these elections in May to be able to ensure that it’s spent on sorting the roads, as this whole thing – this quest for this funding – has taken me over 18 months to put together and honestly I’ll go mad if someone else ends up being in charge of it and wastes it on something else. It’s a one-off chance to sort it out.
I’m the first to appreciate that it shouldn’t require this kind of drastic approach to be able to do something basic like maintain the roads, but the impact of inflation and rising wages on Council Budgets at the minute means that there just isn’t enough money for anything other than delivering the legal requirements around social care and children’s services. The regional election is our one chance to get it!
Honestly I know and totally agree that the status quo isn’t good enough, and that’s why I’ve made it my personal mission to secure this new funding. I've managed to do that successfully, and now we need to make sure it's spent properly. It's a once in a generation chance to change things.
