Boost for community transport and cycling in Worcestershire part of Lib Dem and Green council budget plans

The 2017 group - comprised of Worcestershire County Council’s Lib Dem and Green councillors - has proposed taking £1 million from a fund put forward by the council’s Conservatives to upgrade the county’s railway stations and use it to bolster community transport, pavements and cycling.

Around £300,000 would be made available to communities isolated by a lack of transport to buy vehicles to get around.

The remaining £700,000 would be spent on improving infrastructure for cyclists and carrying out the backlog of pavement repairs.

The group’s budget amendments also include a plan to reduce the council’s cabinet budget by £9,000 to move it in line with nine members rather than ten.

The money would then be reinvested in the council’s scrutiny groups to allow councillors to visit examples of best practice elsewhere and to bring in expert advisers when needed or pay for small pieces of research.

Also in the amendments is a plan to take £50,000 from the council’s fund to help initiatives which support business and green technology to help speed up the process of changing old street lamps to LED.

The money would be made available to councillors who match fund the work from their own highways allocation.

A separate amendment has also been put forward by group leader Councillor Liz Tucker to cut proposed savings by the council to the county’s archive and archaeology service.

Cllr Tucker has proposed taking £50,000 from the council’s transformation reserve fund to reduce the cut to the archive budget from £250,000 to £200,000.

Cllr Tucker said reducing the cut would allow the service to reshape itself and allow itself to prepare for the future.

The council plans to cut its archive budget from £700,000 to £450,000 having been £1.2 million in 2010.

The budget will be discussed and voted on at a full meeting of the county council today (February 14).