Hucknall councillors back Independent Alliance's £20m plan to fix Nottinghamshire's roads

Couns Dave Shaw, Lee Waters and John Wilmott (all Ash Ind) will back the council budget amendment put forward by Alliance leader Coun Jason Zadrozny (Ash Ind) at the budget full council meeting on February 22.

The Independent Alliance opposition group, which the three Hucknall councillors are members of, is proposing to raise £20m by selling land at Toton, originally bought in 2019 for the now abandoned HS2 northern leg project.

The Independents say broken Conservative Government promises over HS2 should now be used to fix broken roads.

Under the Independents’ amendment plan, Ashfield would receive an extra £5.2m for road and pothole repairs, each year for the next two years.

This would be on top of the extra £4m already announced by the Tory-controlled county council for road repairs.

The Independents have also launched a petition to put pressure on the council to fix Nottinghamshire’s roads

The petition can be viewed and signed at change.org/p/for-notts-county-council-to-spend-an-extra-20million-fixing-our-roads-and-pavements

Coun Waters said: “I have been told time and time again, that the county council doesn’t have the money to carry out my daily requests (for repairs to Hucknall roads and pavements).

"In previous years, we called for the new council offices near Top Wighay Farm to be scrapped but now they have started building them, we were told there was no going back.

"Our team have found a way of raising enough money through the cancellation of HS2 to spend an extra £10m a year, for the next two years.

"We will be encouraging council colleagues to vote for this sensible approach.”

Coun Wilmott has also confirmed he would be backing the amendment saying that the state of Hucknall’s broken roads and pavements had reached ‘emergency levels.’

He said: “Let’s look at the facts.

"In 2019, the council bought land expecting HS2 to arrive.

"Now HS2 has been axed, why sit on derelict land when our the state of our highways have reached emergency levels?

"The Independent Alliance were tasked with coming up with a plan to invest in Hucknall and Nottinghamshire roads and they have done exactly that.

"We hope that Labour and Conservative councillors back our budget plan.”