Planned cycling schemes and improvements to pavements in Epsom and Ewell could be abandoned due to hundreds of thousands of pounds of budget cuts, a councillor has warned.

County councillors on the borough’s committee Local Committee would receive £5,000 each to spend on small projects – but this would represent a reduction from £35,000 each in previous years.

Commitments to proceed with setting up Residents’ Parking Zones (RPZs) and waiting restrictions requested by residents in Church Road, Woodcote Side and Portland Place will be honoured, the committee’s chairman has insisted.

From last week: Surrey County Council to slash highways budget for Epsom and Ewell by nearly 80 per cent, leaked emails reveal

But Labour borough councillor Kate Chinn (pictured below) feels making Surrey’s roads safe should be the committee’s priority, and claimed that elderly residents had told her they are afraid to go outside because of the state of roads and pavements. “They just become housebound,” she said.

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The committee is made up of a majority of seven Residents’ Association (RA) councillors, two Conservative and one Labour councillor.

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If these numbers remained roughly similar after next month’s county council elections, committee chairman Eber Kington (pictured above) said, the RA would vote to pool the remaining £17,000 of the initial funds of £77,000 for remaining projects.

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But this will not be enough to adequately repair the borough’s roads, fix its footways and protect its pavements, Cllr Kington told the Epsom Guardian.

“Members’ allocations will not go far, but then £77,000 will not go far,” Cllr Kington said.

“It’s about trying to squeeze £355,000’s worth of work out of £77,000. It will not be like it was in previous years.”

Last week he described the cuts as “horrendous”.

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The committee’s budget for the 2017/18 financial year is to be slashed by almost 80 per cent, according to emails seen by the Epsom Guardian (pictured above).

In 2016/17 the committee received £355,433 from Surrey County Council but that is set to tumble to £77,273 – a cut of about 78 per cent.

Countywide highways projects of £44 million will remain this year, according to Surrey.

From March 2017: Surrey County Council plans to cut millions of pounds from frontline services in face of Conservative austerity

Surrey County Council’s cabinet last month approved £72 million worth of cuts from frontline services across the next five years as it attempts to offset sustained government cuts and “poor spending decisions”.

The government has cut the council’s annual grant by £170million since 2010, while demand for adult social care, learning disabilities and children’s services is increasing.

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But Surrey Liberal Democrat leader Hazel Watson said the financial crisis had been exacerbated by “the poor stewardship of Surrey's finances by the Conservatives”.

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At the cabinet meeting at which the cuts were outlined, Conservative council leader David Hodge (pictured above) said: “I believe we, as Conservatives, have been quite prudent, sensible and pragmatic about how we put this budget forwards.”

A Surrey County Council spokesman said “Even with demand for the council's services rising and the need to find significant savings the amount being spent on Surrey's highways this year is more than £44 million."

The Epsom Guardian has been unable to contact the Conservative Party’s members of the local committee for further comment.

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