Herts Liberal Democrats Demand Action on Highways Safety

Herts County Council is to review its highways faults inspection regime following pressure from the Liberal Democrat Group Leader and Deputy Leader.

Lib Dem Group Leader, County Councillor (Watford: Central & Oxhey), Stephen Giles-Medhurst said "There are grave concerns regarding our Highways safety and the regime in place to ensure it. The findings in the case of Curtis v HCC, where Mr Curtis was seriously injured because the highways inspection regime failed to spot a serious pothole and fix it. This shows that the County's inspection regime is not fit for pressure and needs a review.

"We should be taking urgent action to protect cyclists and other road users from serious Highways faults, as well as the Authority needing to take action to prevent further legal claims against it."

At last week's Highways Panel, officers defended the current inspection regime implying, despite the court case result, that nothing was wrong and said they would not review for at least 18 months.

"I am thus pleased that at Full Council, the whole council accepted this was not good enough and backed my motion for a review - and I hope changes the inspection regime to within 6 months."

Tring Lib Dem County Councillor Nick Hollinghurst also spoke at the Council meeting. He said that the judgement also called into question a Highways Authority's statutory defence against negligent maintenance. This concerned the inspection frequency, which the Highways Act leaves for the Authority to determine in the light of the actual use and amount of traffic on the highway in question.

He said, "In practice road use and the amount of traffic can change. A formerly quiet road, which has become heavily used over time, can often be left with an annual inspection period decided upon decades ago. Unless the county reviews and updates these inspection periods a court may decide they are unreasonable in the light of current road use. This would deprive the County of its statutory defence, thus exposing it to successful claims."