Highways Agency To Be Private Company

[spaximus]

Just read an article that says the HA are going to be made into a private company before the next election. They will run the road network and these changes will mean billions in savings to the tax payer before the next election, sounds good?
So how long before they have power to raise fines for speeding? How long before they get road pricing for using their roads, as they will own them in this new set up?
When they made traffic wardens not part of the police, look where that led to, was it £350,000,000 I read thet took last year from motorists?
So the government can save money and face as they will say it is nothing to do with them when we are racking up money on the HA alter.
Am I being too cynical?

[V8forweekends]

spaximus said:

.....and these changes will mean billions in savings to the tax payer before the next election, sounds good?
...
Am I being too cynical?

No you aren't - I'd love to know where the billions of pounds in savings are supposed to come from.

[anonymous-user]

It's perfectly fine. All that's happening is government are taking over direct ownership of them rather than them being a quango. They'll be owned by the government just like the Post Office.

Oh... wait.... what just happened to the Post office. Hmmmm.

[Riley Blue]

charltjr said:

It's perfectly fine. All that's happening is government are taking over direct ownership of them rather than them being a quango. They'll be owned by the government just like the Post Office.

Oh... wait.... what just happened to the Post office. Hmmmm.

That was Royal Mail, the Post Office is owned by HMG but I take your point...

[DonkeyApple]

V8forweekends said:

spaximus said:

.....and these changes will mean billions in savings to the tax payer before the next election, sounds good?
...
Am I being too cynical?

No you aren't - I'd love to know where the billions of pounds in savings are supposed to come from.

By passing on the costs to the motorist. Simples.

[boxedin]

So they can introduce road pricing and people won't be able to blame the government...

[mph1977]

V8forweekends said:

spaximus said:

.....and these changes will mean billions in savings to the tax payer before the next election, sounds good?
...
Am I being too cynical?

No you aren't - I'd love to know where the billions of pounds in savings are supposed to come from.

here's a few top of the head suggestions

-Removal of 'Whitehall' TaCoS from middle-to Senior managers and above

-Bringing in some people with actual business acumen in certain roles rather than career snivel serpents and the Public Sector 'failed baked bean stackers' ( who failedi n private business because of lack of acumen and fail in the public sector becasue they treat 'Operational' Professionals like they treated the whinging hourly paid staff in the private sector and think their desmond from a lower redbrick or poly makes them better than Professionals ... )

-Revenue Generation by the Traffic Officer / Incident Support service - by contracting themselves to other paying customers (e.g. LAs, events ) - as seen with other Public sector organisations such as paidfor policing for events, NHS ambulance services running an in -house 'private' service ( for re-pats, events and so -on - although sometimes they are only selling the service to the 999 side such as lon#g distance critical care transfers that would otherwise have to be fitted into 999 cover) etc etc

- Effective cost recovery where incidents cause damage to HA infrastructure

Edited by mph1977 on Wednesday 11th June 19:02