If there’s one thing that all 77 of Hertfordshire’s county councillors all agree on, it’s this –
County Councillors have many other responsibilities:- Social Services, Public Health,Childrens Services, Special Educational Needs Support, Adult Care, Waste Disposal, Libraries and the Fire & Rescue Service. They also have a number of specialised planning responsibilities in connections for such things as:- Transport, Flood Management, Environment Issues, Health & Wellbeing and Disaster Recovery.
Nearly everything listed above is crucial to making the future better – either for individuals, especially the young, or for society as a whole or for future generations. And yet councillors are too often and for too long tied down by the here and now of highways issues. No-one sees the unfortunate person suffering the misery of mental illness, nor their desperate family and friends struggling to cope. Few see the elderly who receive inadequate care or notice that a child is failing to progress at school and is being set up never to achieve their true potential. But people do see the pothole that has just damaged their car.
Councillors would like to devote more of their time and energies to helping improve life for the disadvantaged and to work towards a better future – especially for the young.
So it is a matter of serious regret that the current highway outsourcing is so poor. The Conservatives are responsible for the contract and its management. Their usual response to any complaint is that targets are being hit and the contract is being adequately performed.
This, however, is contradicted by experience and reality. In fact the targets are often inappropriate, the inspection regime lacks vigilance, contract management is inattentive and any penalties for poor performance are completely trivial.
In one month alone, March 2016, there were 58 “failure to deliver” highway repair events – but the penalties imposed only came to £15,920. In April 2016, 55 failure events led to penalties of just £9,960.
Compared to a contract value of about £40 million a year this is neither a deterrent nor an incentive to improve – the penalties are a total irrelevancy.
Councillors each have a small (in highway terms) fund for repairs and development which they are supposed to control. Yet even here both councillors and the public are let down. Out of a total of £6 million across the county, half a million pounds of councillor requested work just never gets done.
Nick Hollinghurst, Liberal Democrat County Councillor for Tring, said, “From whatever angle you look at it, the Hertfordshire highway outsourcing contract is a failure – poorly managed and poorly performed.”
He added, “Not only do we get poor value for money on our roads, but, worse than that, it is a massive distraction taking councillors away from the rather more important social issues for which they are also responsible.”