INVERKEITHING and Dalgety Bay councillor Dave Dempsey claims money earmarked for Fife’s £120million road repairs backlog is being used to cover shortfalls elsewhere.

The leader of the Conservative Group on Fife Council referred to the budget monitoring report and said, “When translated from councilspeak, this means that a shortfall in rubbish collection and recycling, notably a drop in income from selling recycled plastic, has been balanced by cutting road repairs.

“‘Re-prioritising’ means putting it off till next year, to be paid for from within next year’s budget which won’t then pay for next year’s repairs.

“Ironically, just a few years ago this accounting exercise wouldn’t have been possible because transportation and environment were separate services with separate budgets.

"Now they’re combined, the rules allow money to be shuffled from one part to another, so a drop in the price of plastic means more potholes left unfilled.

"The second hit came a bit further down the agenda when we were outvoted and the committee approved £750,000 for the next phase of improvements to Kirkcaldy High Street. Nothing wrong with that till you see how it’s to be paid for – partly from funding set aside for the High Street but mostly (another £400,000) from the ‘Safeguarding Our Infrastructure – Roads Maintenance Fund’.

“One of the council’s flagship objectives is to ‘make Fife the Best Place to Do Business’. That’s good but it’s not clear that taking lumps out of the roads budget when there’s a £120million repairs backlog is the right way to go about it.” Bob McLellan, head of transportation and environmental services, insisted that only minor works would be delayed.

“Heads of service are required to contain expenditure within the approved budget and therefore the service had to defer £600K of footway projects and other minor maintenance projects,” he said.

“All projects being deferred are of a lower priority and the road patching budgets will not be reduced and all potholes will be dealt with promptly as normal.

"The £400,000 approved by the executive committee towards the upgrade of the south end of High Street, Kirkcaldy, will be wholly spent on maintaining and upgrading the damaged road surface and footways at this high-profile town centre location. "The additional allocation of £350,000 from Kirkcaldy Town Centre Development allows us to provide higher-quality surface finishes and features in keeping with previous public realm improvements already completed in the High Street.”