Press Release - 26 February 2007
BBEG take second Formal
Complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman
The BBEG have today emailed the Complaint Form
to the Local Government Ombudsman as follows:
Which council or authority are you complaining about?
Lincolnshire County Council
Have you complained to the council or authority?
Yes
If you know, please say when you complained to the council or
authority.
We have followed their complaint procedure as follows:
Stage 1 - 6 December 2006 Read the letter...
LCC Response - 19 December 2006 Read the letter...
Stage 2 - 26 December 2006 Read the letter...
LCC Response (longer than 10 working days to reply) - 30 January 2007 Read the letter...
Stage 3 - 5 February 2007 Read the letter...
No response has been received from the Chief Executive by the deadline
stated in our letter (19 Feb 2007), so we are now taking our Complaint to the
Local Government Ombudsman for investigation.
What do you think the council
or authority did wrong?
Lincolnshire County Council, as we stated in our Formal Complaint letters to
them, have repeatedly and deliberately avoided making a genuine case for
Boston for a major road infrastructure. We have witnessed “untruths” told to
the Dock Link Road Public Inquiry Inspector, the Scrutiny Management
Committee, to us and to the public, for example stating that funds cannot be
transferred, that bypasses cannot be built in sections, and that Boston’s
railway crossing (the main bottleneck in the town) will be made into 3 lanes of
road traffic supposedly like the one in Lincoln, together with them actually
trying to prove the reasons why Boston doesn’t justify a major road
infrastructure by their manipulation of the Transport Study and Public
Consultation Exercises. There is no clearly set budget to work to – we are very
concerned that allocated funds have been taken away from Boston. Who is
independently monitoring the Council’s finances? We have, as you suggested,
made a Complaint to the Standards Board, which you will have received a copy
of: http://www.bbeg.org.uk/press_21022007_STANDARDSBOARD.htm
How has this affected you?
It takes up to 45 minutes to travel 3 miles across Boston – that’s an average
speed of 4mph. The proposed road widening will only improve this by 2mph
and will not resolve the bottlenecks in the town. Boston has a severe
problem NOW. Businesses in Boston are dying. Big stores are reporting
high falls in turnover. Lorries are avoiding Boston, preferring the rat runs
around Horncastle, Langrick, Hubberts Bridge, etc. Boston is choking on
the fumes of pollution and congestion and the public who elect Councillors
to represent them want something urgently done about it. Boston has to be
a high priority, if not the highest in Lincolnshire at this point in time.
What do you think the council or authority should do to put
things right?
Lincolnshire County Council should be lobbying Parliament for funding and
making Boston a priority, above yet another bypass for Lincoln. Lincoln
does not have anywhere near the traffic and congestion problems of
Boston. Lincolnshire County Council to date have refused to prioritise
Boston for a bypass (or distributor road, or ring road, under the Local
Transport Plan) and the decision makers (LCC Executive Group) were hand
picked by Martin Hill, Leader of LCC, from his own same political party,
following the resignation of the former group as a result of the Audit
Commission’s damning report the year before last. The Council have
ignored Boston and delayed the issue long enough now. An external
investigation needs to occur into why LCC have never requested funding
from the Government for a bypass for Boston and moreover why they have
put Boston on an “aspirational list” and decided that “no work be
undertaken on any aspirational schemes during the 2nd Local Transport
Plan period”, if we are to ever find a way forward.
Robert Fisher
For and on behalf of the Boston Bypass & Economic Growth
Pressure Group (BBEG)
www.bbeg.org.uk
26 February 2007
