Herts Highways Fault Reporting System at Fault!
Liberal Democrats have again criticised the Conservative administration at Herts County Council for their behaviour over the Highways Fault Reporting System.
Liberal Democrat Leader Chris White said:
'This system is vital to the rickety highways repair system. Hertfordshire County Council has now become reliant on the public to be its eyes and ears - rather than having a proper inspection system to find faults.
'So it was the height of folly when they made the system much more complicated than it needed to be - by introducing a registration system and forcing people to use maps to mark faults rather than just naming the road.
'But it takes the Tories to pile folly upon folly. The Executive Member for Highways had to make a shame-faced admission at the recent county council meeting that they hadn't bothered testing the new system and that it did things it wasn't supposed to.'
The county council promised it would be improving matters during the course of the week but it is clearly still not working properly. Chris said: 'I tried logging in as a citizen with my assigned user name and password and it told me there was a "problem with the system". I then had a look at the business registration form - still a huge long list of intrusive and pointless questions including your VAT number.' He concluded: 'As ever with Herts Highways - it simply isn't good enough.'
Nick Hollinghurst, Herts County Councillor for Tring & the Villages - who has had his own problems with Herts Highways' refusal to admit the Moor End Rd Bus Lane signs needed fixing - made an additional point. He said, "County are trying to restrict peoples' access to the Fault Reporting System by running checks on the Hertfordshire electoral rolls. If you're not on one - you're out! No-one who lives out-of-county can report faults on our roads, no-one who's recently moved in and no-one who's not on the electoral register for any other reason either. Several prominent Lib Dems who are members of the House of Lords are likewise debarred - even though they're Herts council-tax payers."
"Not much committment here then from the Herts Tories here for such things as transparency, accountability or open government! The Big Society's a fine idea - but the Herts Tories are happy to chuck you out to cut down on complaints."