Liberal Democrats have attacked Conservative-controlled Hertfordshire County Council’s response to the pothole crisis that has arisen from the recent snow. Because many of Hertsfordshire’s roads are now a mass of holes of varying degrees of danger, Lib Dem county councillor Malcolm Cowan has asked for a special exercise to spot and record the faults.

Malcolm Cowan says: ‘Astonishingly, the response I got was that they would only be looking at main roads and so presumably they will rely on residents to report the faults on the rest.

‘This is a poor attitude: special exercises were mounted in the recent years after snow – why not now? Not everyone has access to the internet, or wants to spend time working out how to use the Fault Reporting system. This follows the news that street lights are also not being checked on other than main roads.

‘With lights going off around midnight, where they still work, and deep potholes not being systematically scouted, the service is getting worse by the month. What next – we each get a bag of tar and are told to fix the potholes ourselves?’