Welcome to 2023. During the course of this year I’m sure that local government will face many new challenges as well as the need to continue the fight against our well known demons such as budget restrictions and continuing network deterioration.
However, what I have learnt during my 40 plus years in the business and in particular my time as CEO of LCRIG is that our local highway authorities are robust and imaginative when it comes to providing the best possible service within the existing constraints. During the course of this year we intend to become even more valuable to the highways community by strengthening the links between DfT, local highway authorities and the critically important supply chain by providing a forum that results is a greater sharing of issues, solutions and experiences so that no one in highways is left behind.
Our learning should run in parallel and whilst I appreciate we will always have those in the vanguard, pushing the boundaries on developing a service that is faster, cheaper and better, we don’t want to see any laggards that one would normally associate with a normal distribution. No matter the scale of your service, or the size of your business I want you to hold LCRIG to account during 2023 to support your organisation as one of our members to ensure we collectively deliver a greater joined up service, with no gaps and which also avoids waste and duplication of effort. You might recall presentations from Kerry and Paula at Strictly Highways where we made commitments to focus on our members as you are truly the lifeblood of LCRIG and our reason for being.
In the next week, I’ll be visiting two of our local authority members and three members from the supply chain to get these discussions underway and I would like to encourage all of you to become active participants of LCRIG and play your part as this will undoubtedly increase your profile and make sure that others from the highways community know how you might be able to help during 2023. Please just get in touch with any member of the LCRIG team to help us push this agenda forward.