I reject the accusation that I have misled anyone. What I have said previously is that this Administration would be putting more money into highways maintenance, including resurfacing. For 2005/6 I said this would be done through new provisions being made for the Local Transport Plan. The Local Transport Plan is both a planning document and a bid submission for additional funding for determination by the Department of Transport.

Slough Councillors' has, therefore, had to allocate funds to resource officers to prepare that Plan, including a major procurement of a computerised modelling system for traffic projection and impact assessment, as well as allocating funds for capital projects referred to in the planning document, indicating our contribution toward the initial bid submission. Provisions for the latter are thus included amongst the growth items in this year's capital programme. These highways improvements include elements of carriageway and footway maintenance and resurfacing.

Moreover, the procurement of the new computerised modelling tool will allow this authority to do away with having to pay for manual traffic counts and projections mainly done by consultants like Babtie. It is my intention that saving will be channelled into more highways maintenance and resurfacing work.