The Lib Dems will be speaking up for local people on Saturday when we march on the main post office in support of the concerns of local people over Post Office closures.

The bizarre incompetence of the Post Office has been exposed in Hertfordshire: the Smallford Post Office is threatened with closure and the local residents are assured that the nearest one is not too far away. True: but it’s the other side of the high speed A414.

Elsewhere there are references to Chorleywood District Council (which doesn’t exist) and residents in Richmond upon Thames invited to step across said river to their nearest alternative.

Spencer Street will now be resurfaced next week after interventions from Chris White.

In a routine check to see whether the County Council would keep its word on this particular street, Chris discovered that they were planning to defer the works until July - despite having told him and residents that it would be done in the coming few days.

Chris comments: ‘This is typical of the County Council. Since the Tories came to power there is no concept of sticking to undertakings given to the public. Local councillors and the public are treated with contempt.’

The County Council is desperately trying to blame the care companies for the fiasco over the reletting of home care contracts.

TV appearances make it clear that they want to be seen as taking on the companies.

The Liberal Democrats have sat down with one of the companies and found a catalogue of errors in the way the previous contract has been run. There can be little doubt that the County Council failed to look after this contract properly and that this led directly to the difficulties on hand-over.

We are now going to the regular ’CSCI’ to see whether there can be external intervention to protect the interests of vulnerable people in St Albans and Three Rivers.

Following an incident last week where an elderly stroke patient was left in
her wheelchair without any support Liberal Democrat county councillor Chris
White has called on the county council to ‘get a grip’ on day-care services
in St Albans.

He said today: ‘It is absolutely evident that there has been a serious
breakdown right across the board: the contract with Supporta Care is not
working.

‘Vulnerable members in our community have the right to have a reliable
service - and a service which is available at weekends. I am not convinced
by assurances that there will be no repeats. There is clearly something
fundamentally wrong and I would be surprised if this is the only
incident.’

Chris added: ‘I am becoming more and more concerned about the direction
being taken by Hertfordshire County Council over adult care services. Too
much is being left to the vagaries of the private sector.’

Herts Highways are assuring me that they will recommence the patching of Spencer Street and Beaumont Avenue within 3 weeks. Residents will recall only too well that contractors had to be removed from Spencer Street because they had effected an illegal road closure. this road is now turning into gravel.

In Beaumont Avenue, it seems that there needed to be road closure too but the contractors hadn’t planned for this. So they worked for a day and then disappeared. But this does not explain why sections in the middle of the road, well away from the hazards at the Hatfield Road end, were not also done.

Liberal Democrats at County Hall will now be holding talks with senior council officers over the future of Herts Highways. It is evident to all of us that matters have got noticeably worse. But current rumours of centralisation of some parts of the local office network have sent a chill through elected representatives. One of the effective parts of Herts Highways has been the local knowledge of local officials: this contrasts to other parts of the County Council where officialdom is often hopelessly remote.

Meanwhile the complacency of the Conservatives was in full view yesterday when one of the leading Tories complained about how much money was being spent in St Albans on roads and pavements: the point of course is not quantity but quality. It is the complex workings of Herts Highways, a bizarre partnership between a council and two private firms, which is wasting so much money.

At this week’s ‘Planning and External Relations’ Cabinet Panel, the members were unanimous in favour of rejecting the recommendatiojns from EERA on the grounds that they are arbitrary, ill-thought through and not in the interests of either the settled or the traveller communities. In particular the idea that every district regardless of size and greenbelt should take 15 pitches was dismissed as a nonsense. The Tory chair of the Panel has agreed to write a very strong letter. Which is interesting since he was the chair of the EERA Panel which originally came up with the proposals - and he refused to back me and my Lib Dem colleagues when we proposed that these crazy proposals be withdrawn.

 His letter to EERA will make interesting reading!

There are some serious safety issues at this junction which will only get worse when the lorry movements at the ‘Oaklands’ site start to get going. I have asked for Herts Highways to review the crossing - not least to see whether anything can be done about crossing on red.

I have managed to badger Herts Highways into:

- replacing the keep clear markings at the junction of Stanhope Road and Grimston Road

- Rstoring the give way markings at the bottom of Carlisle Avenue.

I am awaiting news as to:

the completion of the patching works on Beaumont Avenue

the restarting of the aborted patching works on Spencer Street.

One of the most noticeable facets of the local election campaign was the fury of local residents over roads and pavements. Many have noticed how much it gets better if you cross the border into another county. So it can’t just be Government underfunding (although that doesn’t help). The Herts Highways system isn’t working. And that is a political matter which will inevitably feature when people vote in the county council election next year.