Government must release housing cash

FIRSTLY, may I congratulate you on your campaign to get a fair deal for Yorkshire from the Government (Yorkshire Post, October 1).

The North, and in particular Yorkshire, is undoubtedly getting a raw deal from central government and I have no doubt that this is holding back economic recovery in the region.

The huge scale of the Government’s cuts, which are hitting northern cities hardest, and the abolition of Yorkshire Forward, which returned in the region of £4.50 for our economy for every £1 it spent, only serve to reinforce the feeling that the Government isn’t presently working in the best interests of Yorkshire.

Your list of proposals to boost the fortunes of our county is therefore most welcome and would go some way towards redressing the balance that has recently been heavily weighted to the South East. However, there was one key area I felt was missing from your plan where the Government could really help to kick-start regeneration in Leeds.

It is now almost a year since the Government gave us approval to move to the next stage of the process to begin work on the £180m Little London, Beeston Hill and Holbeck PFI housing regeneration project, which will deliver almost 400 new homes and refurbish 1,250 others. We had hoped to start work on the scheme this summer, but the Government is still prevaricating and refusing to give us final approval.

This is intensely frustrating, as this scheme will not only provide high-quality new homes for tenants, it will create hundreds of jobs and training opportunities in our city. On top of this, the delay in the Government giving us the go-ahead is costing the council £1m a month as inflation drives the project cost up.

Could I therefore add the following proposal to your already extensive list: That the Government provides the money for a vital regeneration scheme they have already given approval to, creating valuable jobs and training in the process.

From: Paul Andrews, The Beeches, Great Habton, York.

I WELCOME the Conservative Party proposal for “credit easing” so as to provide loans to small and (one hopes) medium-sized businesses (Yorkshire Post, October 4).

It is not clear from the news whether the Government is going to guarantee loans made by banks or provide the loans itself from the Bank of England and the Treasury.

Either way, this is likely to involve a lot of form-filling and a whole raft of officials to examine and process applications.

Wouldn’t it be better to simply change the lending policies of the banks which are in public ownership so as to compel them to lend to applicants who meet criteria laid down by Government? This would avoid any necessity to employ huge numbers of public servants, and leave the vetting of business plans in the hands of those who know how to do the job.

The only new work for the Treasury would then be to police the banks and check that they are acting in conformity with the new lending criteria.

There would be no need to provide the loans from public funds. The taxpayer has already invested vast sums of money in the banks in order to re-capitalise them after the credit crunch. The banks should simply be required to use this public investment for loans to small and medium-sized businesses for purposes which meet certain defined criteria.

If civil servants are asked to advise on “credit easing”, they will doubtless come up with an elaborate and expensive gold-plated scheme which will be slow and cost almost as much to administer as the loans themselves. This will swell the ranks of officials so as to either take resources from underfunded public services or even put the Government’s spending cuts policy in reverse.

Let’s hope that common sense and simplicity will prevail and that Ministers will concentrate on making the existing system deliver their requirements instead of inventing something entirely new.

Changing times

From: S B Oliver, Churchill Grove, Heckmondwike.

I CAN quite understand the intrigue shown by M J Wadley (Yorkshire Post, October 1) on the changed wording of warning signs at temporary traffic lights.... from: “When red light shows, wait here” to “Wait here until green light shows”.

He/she says that they both mean the same thing but, to my non-legal mind, they do not. My reasoning stems from when I was once told that if any of the lightbulbs failed, the contractors had to make sure that the red was always working.

This is because the amber isn’t important and if the green isn’t working, then the lights will all be out so traffic can proceed with caution (so not infringing the “wait here on red” message) until the red comes back on.

Temporary lights could function satisfactorily (provided they are sequenced correctly) with just red lights that are either on or off. However, at any time, if any red is not working, then that is big trouble.

Motorists still under attack

From: T E Marston, Cambridge Street, Otley.

FULL marks to B MacDowall (Yorkshire Post, October 1) for stating that the war on the motorist is still in action. A couple of weeks ago on returning home from York I decided to avoid the car park which is called Boston Spa and use the back road from Tadcaster to Wetherby via Thorp Arch.

There I was at 14.35 on an unclassified road with no lighting or road marking, no other vehicle, person or house in sight when I was alerted by a flash in my mirror. I then noticed a camera behind a tree and on retracing my steps I found a 30mph sign which must be the smallest sign allowable, also up against the tree.

This area is called Walton and the summons referred to it as Leeds. This makes it sound better as it is in open country but just inside the Leeds postcode area.

This blatant dirty trick is now going to deface my driving licence. If this is the best that they can do I suggest that they all retire. They will get better pensions than I do.