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STRAIGHT TALK: What cost Government savings?
PLANS announced to cut back on information given to the public about road closures and roadworks could cause more traffic misery for the long-suffering South Holland motorists.
What with the saga of the delayed opening of the new road to Peterborough and the continual problems at Woolram Wygate, we haven’t exactly had the rub of the green.
But cost-cutting proposals by the Department of Transport could make things a whole lot worse.
Our friends in central government are proposing to remove the need for councils to place public notices in local newspapers such as the Spalding Guardian to inform residents where roadworks will affect traffic.
The Department has started consultation to allow local authorities, the Highways Agency, utilities companies and other businesses such as property developers to advertise Traffic Regulation Orders elsewhere, such as on their own websites.
It claims this is a deregulatory measure, to cut red tape and save costs. Yes, it will save them costs, but at what cost? Are we all going to study Lincolnshire County Council or Highways Agency websites before setting out on our journeys?
Are we going to check our mobile phones for tweets from said authorities before we jump in the car? Would we even do this if we had the technology? Many of our elderly relatives don’t.
The most appropriate and effective place for publicising traffic regulation orders is in the local press, which plays a crucial role in informing the community of these matters which affect readers’ daily lives.
Then there’s our broader role of helping enforce local democracy and holding local authorities to account.
The Department of Transport’s proposal is driven entirely by cost saving with little regard for the future of publicising the notices to the greatest number of people.
Placing them on council/government websites will severely restrict the general public’s access to them and their awareness of information affecting them.
The local press nationally is facing extremely challenging economic conditions and we depend upon advertising revenue to underpin our journalistic and other services for the community.
This proposal to ‘save’ £20m of revenue from this industry will just compound the pressure.
• THE Spalding Guardian and our sister paper the Lincolnshire Free Press are inviting readers to join a newly-formed panel.
By joining the Reader Panel you can give your views on your papers and their website and contribute to their development.
With your help we can produce the best possible publications, based on what you want. We are at the heart of local life and aim to stay there – with your help.
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Weather for Spalding
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 24 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: East
Comments
There are 3 comments to this article
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CampaigningForSpalding
Friday, February 17, 2012 at 12:11 PMIt's not about the money, money, money we don't want your....as the song goes. Is that not less about budget saving and everything to do with cutting those pesky members of public out of the information loop? Heather Brooke, the journalist who forced the hand of MP's resulting in the expenses scandal, details brilliantly with evidence in her second from last book of how we are cut out of this information loop - the less we know the less we will complain and ultimately the less atrocities being committed by those above we will expose. It also details the fate of local papers, especially their ability to report on crime.
gbh
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 09:29 AMSomeone will have to put the information onto a council or government website. That same text can be sent by email for next to no cost to local newspapers. I don't know if local newspapers make a charge for including this information. If they do then it's a potential loss of revenue, but the information is important to the local community and as such is probably of more interest than some of the content used to fill the pages.
Insideout
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 11:46 PMA brave effort at defending a lucrative source of income for the local press your employer, but ultimately unconvincing. Let's say for arguments sake that your readership is 50% of the drivers using the roads covered by these notices - I suspect I'm being far too generous - exactly what percentage of those driving readers even know those notices appear in the paper let alone read them? I think we've very quickly gone from double figures to single at best. Not exactly the most cost effective use of the taxpayers money in my opinion.
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