IN reply to Councillor Adrian Shurmer's letters in the LET, I would like to point out that the meeting with Lancashire County Council was a very constructive meeting.

Although Coun Shurmer attended the meeting, I don't think he was actually there. He certainly did not want to listen to what was being said. On the contrary, he was only interested in voicing his own opinions without taking into consideration the views of all those present.

As far as Hyndburn Council is concerned we act only as agents for Lancashire County Council as it is ultimately the highways authority and, as such, has the final say.

In relation to traffic calming measures, Hyndburn Council submits these to Lancashire County Council for their approval and, if granted, the schemes are implemented.

What has been the mainstay of Coun Shurmer's argument is that he wants Hyndburn Council to employ independent experts and consultants so that all the schemes can be adjudged.

Hyndburn Council, thanks to Lancashire County Council, has a very limited budget to spend on highway maintenance. It has dropped from £1.4 million in the days of the Conservative government, to just over £800,000 under the present Labour government. To spend money on these experts and consultants would seriously deplete these resources. At the end of the day, Lancashire County Council could ignore their findings and still go ahead, with or without our approval.

We therefore have to walk a very fine line and try and judge every scheme on its merits before submission and make doubly certain of our facts.

What we did get out of the meeting was an assurance that all the schemes currently in place could, if necessary, be looked at again and any fine tuning would be looked upon favourably.

As far as the Conservatives removing Coun Shurmer as chairman of the traffic management review panel is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. We proposed him as such but the Labour party voted against this move and proposed a Conservative chairman to take his place.

COUNCILLOR DOUGLAS DEAKIN, Station Road, Huncoat.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.