Council responds to open-letter on highways
The North Northamptonshire Councillor was responding to an open letter by Wellingborough and Rushden MP Gen Kitchen.
North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) has responded to an open letter issued by Wellingborough and Rushden MP Gen Kitchen, asking if the contract with highways partner Kier would be extended, given their “sub-par” service.
Cllr Matt Binley, executive member for highways and travel at NNC, addressed other members of the panel to say that there had been clear improvements with Kier over the last year and turned the finger back at Ms Kitchen to “hold her government to account” to deliver highways funding promised by the previous Tory office.
He presented some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from his portfolio at the executive meeting on Thursday, August 15, which he called “pertinent”.
The executive member said the performance of Kier responding to repairs within agreed timeframes had improved, sitting at 91.96 per cent of cases dealt with on time compared to 86.81 per cent last year. He also highlighted a 7.6 per cent reduction in the number of outstanding defects when compared with the same period last year.
Cllr Binley told the executive meeting: “The reason I mention that, chair, is because I think that’s really positive for the people of North Northamptonshire. Showing that our contractor, Kier Highways, we are holding them to account and we are driving forward performance.
“That’s shown by those figures. That is fact.
“So chair, when somebody says that the repairs being carried out are ‘sub-par’ I don’t understand what figure is being used, what facts are being used to look at those statistics because when you look at those you can quite clearly see that there is an improvement.
“We do know of course that the highways need work on, but what the KPIs shows is that we are doing it.”
In her letter, MP Gen Kitchen said she knew that many people felt the service provided by Kier had “not been satisfactory”. She also claimed she had personally been monitoring several repairs across her constituency where the patching was “sub-par”.
Cllr Binley questioned what she meant by “sub-par” and disregarded it as “hearsay”.
He continued: “What I would say to this individual is that she needs to hold her government to account to make sure the people of her constituency see the investment that was promised by the last government.
“We need to see that £149m that we were promised over a seven-year period happen.
“Look at the figures as an individual when you are writing open letters to this council because the figures are there for all to see.
“Hold the government to account and make sure the people of this area get the investment that they were promised.”
‘They’ve stepped up’
Leader of NNC, Jason Smithers also addressed the matter: “I think it’s fair to say that we did hold Kier’s feet to the fire about eight months ago, we had them in the office, we told them we weren’t happy.
“I made it very clear that I wasn’t happy with the level of performance and they’ve stepped up. They’ve increased their activity, they’ve made sure that our highways are managed well and they’ve ensured that they’re repairing things to the best of their ability at all times now.
“There is going to be some repairs that do fail, it’s nature, it’s the way things happen and it’s worth reminding people that if a road repair fails under the contract Kier come and do it at their own cost so it’s no extra cost to this authority.
“My open letter to the chancellor was to hold their feet to the fire to ensure North Northamptonshire gets that sum of money because that’s a considerable sum of money for this area to make some major improvements to our highways.
“It’s time to be counted as MPs, stand up and hold your own Government to account.”