The chief executives of English local authorities outside London are being urged to ensure their highways teams submit expressions of interest for a share of new funding to repair and upgrade their traffic signals.
The Department for Transport announced last week that £15 million of extra money has been allocated to supplement existing local authority spending on the upgrade and maintenance of traffic signals and associated equipment and has now written to the chief executives at 126 highway authorities and combined authorities.
The letter from the DfT’s Deputy Director, Traffic and Technology, Anthony Ferguson says funding in blocks of between £300,000 and £500,000 will be paid out to between 30 and 50 local authorities based on their ability to demonstrate the operation of specific policies and procedures. The DfT will be working with the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) to collect evidence, with the application process running for four weeks from 12 April to 7 May.
“This funding is being allocated specifically to address the backlog in traffic signal maintenance and upgrading works in English local authorities and cannot be used to replace existing allocated resource but is funding for new work or additional ‘top up’ to existing programmes,” Mr Ferguson writes. “The funding will be awarded based on demonstration of need and evidence of authorities understanding of their estate, maintenance priorities and policy vision.”
The money will be allocated to authorities that can show evidence of an understanding of needs and priorities, planning for the future, wider targets and a preparedness for future technology opportunities. They simply need to show a need, readiness and a policy around signal upgrades and repair.
The application process via the LCRIG website – www.lcrig.org.uk – will run for four weeks and will open on Monday (12 April). The closing date for applications is 7 May. LCRIG ask that any councils interested in submitting an application should contact Secretariat Susanne Ingham at Susanne.ingham@lcrig.org.uk with details of the relevant contact(s) who will be provided with login details next week.
(Picture – Transport Technology Forum)
