At the budget setting meeting today at County Hall, councillors heard about the Administration‘s  plans to reset spending on roads, pavements, gulleys and culverts back to 2012/13 levels.

This means over £4m million more than spent last year, after a series of cuts in spending over the last four years. They also heard about £3.5m extra Government grant for potholes and fixing pavements.

Liberal Democrat Leader and Highways Spokesperson, Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst, said: “Our surveys of residents say that the state of our roads and footways is the number one issue  in the county and Hertfordshire Lib Dems don’t think enough is being d on e to add re ss this. Funding for repairing our roads and pavements needs radical resetting, as any resident can tell by driving their local streets and seeing for themselves the damage and unrepaired faults.”

At the meeting, Lib Dems proposed a £7m increase in highways spending, to try and address the problems we all see every day. The Conservatives voted against this.

Paul Zukowskyj,  Shadow Cabinet member for resources, who proposed the amendment, commented: “The Tories have at last admitted that more needs to be spent on our roads and footways. Sadly they’re still not spending enough. Despite a series of million-pound windfalls, they’ve decided to keep the money in the bank rather than invest it in the future of our county. Apparently they believe squirrelling money away is better than investing in the future.”