ARGYLL and Bute Council’s depute leader has warned that the authority is storing up trouble for itself by slashing the amount of money it spends on street signs.

Councillor Ellen Morton said the budget for road signs had been slashed from £5,000 to just £500 without members’ knowledge.

Speaking at the Helensburgh and Lomond area committee, Cllr Morton, who is also the council’s policy lead for roads and amenity services, pointed out that £1,415 had been spent on street signs by the end of December 2016 – an overspend on the available budget of 283 per cent – with one quarter of the financial year still to go.

She told the meeting: “The budget of £500 is very small, so an overspend of £915 is not significant in itself – but what is an issue for me is that the budget itself has been reduced.

“The budget has been £5,000 for the last 15, 16 or 17 years, and it’s now been reduced to £500 with no discussion with me, as policy lead, or any elected member that I’m aware of.”

Cllr Morton said when she was first elected to the council in 1999, there were “hundreds” of street signs missing across the Helensburgh and Lomond area, which were then replaced within the two or three years that followed.

She said: “Street signage might seem like a trivial issue, but it isn’t – in an emergency it can be critically important, not to mention the inconvenience caused to people not familiar with the area.

“A repeated shortfall will lead to us building up a long term problem similar to the one we had 18 years ago. I’m really unhappy about the budget being cut in this way. It’s not acceptable.”

Roads performance manager Kevin McIntosh said in response that he would “take those comments back” to his colleagues.

Mr McIntosh told the meeting that £525,116, or 83 per cent of the total roads budget for the Helensburgh and Lomond area in 2016-17, had been spent by the end of the third quarter of the 2016-17 financial year, in line with overall expectations.

Notable works carried out in the area during October, November and December of last year included the resurfacing of around 700 square metres of footway in Helensburgh’s Sinclair Street, from Victoria Street to East Rossdhu Drive, and a small stretch of footway on the old A814 at Queen’s Point in Shandon.

Other works undertaken during the same three-month period included the installation of bus stop kerbing at two bus stops on the A814 in Rhu, costing around £8,000, and gully emptying in Kilcreggan, Clynder, Rosneath, Arrochar and Garelochhead, following similar work in Helensburgh last September.

Ditching work has been carried out on the B833, Barbour Road in Kilcreggan, and in Glen Fruin.

The total roads budget for the local area in 2016-17 is £632,800.