Council wastes £130,000 building road crossing over driveway!
on June 25th, 2010 at 11:23 pmA blundering council has wasted £130,000 of public money on a pedestrian road crossing that cannot be used. Bizarrely the puffin crossing was installed months after the same council granted residents Angela and Robin Wray planning permission for a driveway access to their house at exactly the same spot. Officials realised it would be unsafe to use the lights as pedestrians would have to stand at the entrance to the couple’s property. The lights have never been turned on in two years. Meanwhile, Kirklees Council has been fighting an expensive losing battle to try and legally ban the retired teachers from using the drive that they were given permission to build. Officials issued a ‘stopping up order’ to stop the access being used by cars, but Robin Wray, 66, and his wife Angela, 63, successfully appealed the ban at a public inquiry last month. Now councillors are coming under fire for running up a six-figure bill. To add insult to injury, if the council backs down it will cost taxpayers a further £30,000 to remove the crossing in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire. Mrs Wray, a mother-of-three and grandmother, yesterday described the council’s decision to build the crossing at the same spot as ‘sheer madness.’ More
