Local transport infrastructure survey
The government recently announced a very significant allocation of funding for local transport infrastructure, with £129 million going to Westmorland and Furness Council over the next seven years. I am delighted with this announcement and believe this funding to be a once in a generation opportunity to transform the road infrastructure across Barrow and Furness. And of course, comes on the back of last week’s £287m additional roads funding announcement, as well as the hundreds of millions of pounds across our various levelling-up funding streams announced since 2019.
My view is that this new funding should be used to bridge the funding gap on the Grizebeck bypass, and then on upgrades to the A595 to Barrow, and the A590 connecting to the M6.
Such improvements would have hugely significant benefits across the region and Furness which would include:
Improving the economic performance and growing the Cumbrian economy.
Improving journey times dramatically as well as road safety.
Bringing enormous benefit to health provision and access to health services.
Generally improving connectivity which will bring wider social and cultural benefits.
One third of my office’s casework is related to council issues including transport, roads and potholes as well as many, many more. I wrote to the Council last year to ask for their plans for spending intentions but received no response.
Please submit to my survey down below and offer your thoughts about how you think the Council should allocate this funding.