Herts County Council is to Postpone At Least 142 Road Repair Schemes Due to a Lack of Financial Control

Conservative run Hertfordshire County Council is cancelling 142 highways repairs, originally planned for this year that would have cost them £3m, after it was revealed it was on course to overspend its budget.

Of the 142 schemes, 104 of them are micro-resurfacing for roads, 4 are resurfacing of footways and a further 34 more major road rebuilding schemes.

The information only came to light after the Leader of Herts Liberal Democrats on the County Council, Stephen Giles-Medhurst, questioned why a scheme which he had been requesting for years and which was finally approved in March this year, had not got its 'road closed for repair' notices up for works that he had been told were due to start on Monday 29th September. After pressing, officials had to admit it was 'cancelled by our IWP team and will be reprogrammed for 2015'.

"Officials have secretly cancelled 142 schemes without first discussing it with elected councillors or even informing them or local residents. Even the Conservative Cabinet Member for Highways did not know until I exposed this. Only two weeks ago the County Council sent an email to all councillors saying 85% of the planned works would be delivered by the end of October - clearly that was not true.

"Now many councillors who have told residents to expect their roads to be resurfaced have egg on their face."

Pushing this work into next year which is now being promised, will have a knock on effect of postponing other schemes already planned for the 2015/16 year - and lists for those have already been circulated. If the coming winter is bad, it may mean that those roads due to be resurfaced now and which are being cancelled, will require more work and expense," said Stephen Giles-Medhurst.

"Given that the council has over £100m in reserves and an underspend of about £4m so far this year across all services - I want to see some of that money put into the road repair schemes that could still be done. That is, the 34 out of the 142 that are not weather dependent.

"They should still go ahead. I also want a clear commitment from the ruling Conservatives that they will not postpone any schemes already planned for 2015/16 to make way for the ones which have been cancelled but will put extra money in to cover those that will now, I am promised, be done in 2015/16.

Stephen Giles-Medhurst went on to say "Yet again a major failure, affecting thousands of residents, has come to light because the Opposition has been questioning what is going on,"

The County Council has now promised to release the full list of the 142 schemes they are cancelling in the next few days. As recently as Friday they refused the Liberal Democrat request for the list.

The picture does not show equipment actually used by Ringway, HCC's contractor, but it is a metaphor for the slowness of HCC's response to highway repairs.