Tory councillor calls for higher levels of highways funding because Hertfordshire's roads are so heavily used

The county council is responsible for the more than 3000 miles of roads – receiving in excess of £20m a year for their upkeep.

But that funding – it was explained to councillors – is allocated on the size and nature of the road network, rather than on the number of road users.

And at a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee on Tuesday (17 December), Cllr Thake suggested the county council was being under-funded.

Cllr Thake pointed to the presence of major roads such as the A1 – for which the county council is not responsible – within the county.

And he suggested that because the A1 was “inadequate”, motorists were effectively using the county’s roads as a bypass.

That, he said, was putting unnecessary traffic onto the county’s A and B roads – leading to greater wear and tear.

And it was as a result of the roads being so heavily trafficked that he suggested the county was being under-funded.

“My perception is that Hertfordshire is disproportionately heavily trafficked, being the approaches to London,” he said.

“And frankly a large part, in my view, of the problems that we have got – in terms of maintaining an adequate highways base with the money we have got – is the fact that some of the principle distributor roads, such as the A1, are frankly inadequate.

“So we are putting a lot of unnecessary traffic on the B roads and the roads that act, in essence, as a bypass to the A1.”

Cllr Thake was making the case at the meeting to Matt Eglinton, head of local highways policy and funding from the Department for Transport.

He asked how the funding for individual authorities was calculated by the Department, which allocates capital funding for structural maintenance of the highways.

And he said it was his “profound belief” that Hertfordshire should be receiving more to deal with the problems it has in terms of traffic.

Mr Eglinton acknowledged that different local authorities would provide different evidence as to why they should receive more funding.

And he set out a formula for the funding for structural maintenance, that took account of the account of the relative size of the highways network in each authority – as well as factors such as bridges and other pieces of infrastructure and lighting columns.

Meanwhile committee chairman Cllr David Andrews also pointed to the impact on the county’s roads caused by issues on the motorways.

“In many, many regards we are a transit country,” he said.

“Now clearly the motorways take a great proportion of that.

“But [..] for example, when the M11 has a problem – which is probably weekly – there’s a variety of A and, in some cases, B roads that then become M11-lite

“And the the same thing happens with the A1 and the M1.

“And we get disproportionate damage to our roads, because of challenges on the main highways.

“And difficult as it might be, those are the sort of things we would really, really welcome some considered reflection on – because we are having to make up that from elsewhere.”

The comments were made as part of a scrutiny of the ‘pressures on highways and customer concerns’.

At the meeting it was reported that in addition to the 3100 miles of road and 3500 miles of footways, the county council was responsible for 180k gullies, 92k road signs, 118k street-lights and 680 sets of traffic lights.

Although it was reported that the county’s highways service delivers a wide range of high quality services, councillors were told that the council does not have the resources to do everything that customers would like.

And it was suggested that the “high volume of high quality work” was overshadowed by the defects that were not addressed.

Outlining the pressures facing highways, the council’s head of highways and strategic operations Anthony Boucher pointed to funding, customers and climate change.

The Department for Transport provides the council with capital funding for structural maintenance of the highways.

Revenue funding for maintenance – that includes grass cutting, gully cleaning and the renewal of road markings – comes to the council through the Revenue Support Grant, paid out through MHCLG.