Fire risk. Highways repairs, surface dressing and more surveys - and more joined up thinking. Weobley Marsh gabions. Traffic calming in both Weobley and Canon Pyon. Moorhampton bus stop, Pothole reporting. Welsh Water disruption, especially outside Weobley. Grants for parishes to improve drainage and footpaths, and more "Dartnell" bridges popping up. Bridleways. (Un)fairer Funding....further efficiencies at Herefordshire Council, and reducing dependency on expesnive, out-of-county, consultants. And a new Prime Minister.
Hopefully by the time you are reading this, we will have had some rain! As I write, the headlines are full of wild fires and concerns about water. At a meeting of Herefordshire Full Council last month, I had an undertaking from the Leader to look into fire security across council-owned and common land (with huge thanks to Fiona Lickorish from Birley & Upper Hill for her contributions), and have been in touch with senior officers at Hereford & Worcester Fire.
Highways teams are busy all around the county – within Weobley ward we have had extensive surface dressing of the Parks at Brinsop, and Derndale Road out of Westhope; and surveying teams out, looking into works required in Kings Pyon, the problems with the bridge over the A4112, and accessibility in Weobley. I’m told that the works on the Moorhampton bus stop are another step closer, with the scope currently just being finalised. There are more repairs due this month in Weobley Marsh, some repairs just south of Canon Pyon on the C1099, and of course there will be extensive road closures for the long-awaited traffic calming measures in Canon Pyon, this month, and Weobley the month after.
The B4230 that runs south of Weobley towards Norton Canon is still under a road closure for the Welsh Water tankers refilling the reservoir. We can’t be certain how long that will last, but that road is also due for repairs this season, with a surface dressing next, and so in the spirit of “never waste a crisis”, a lot of preparatory work has been done on drainage there. Generally, I’m delighted to see this – fixing the drainage before the road! - to be the operational norm, as seen on Derndale and The Parks.
Obviously fixing roads is far better than cycling through pothole repairs, but we can’t resurface the whole county immediately (estimates are that it would cost something like £300m- possibly a lot more), so in the meantime it’s important to keep pressure on pothole fixing. Last month I reported the improved functionality when you report a pothole, with the system providing tracking. I’m still rattling cages about this – it’s an improvement, but not enough – and I want to see better data integrity, and integration with tools such as FixMyStreet. But please do continue to report them – especially on the C and U roads, which don’t otherwise get a monthly survey. I’m glad to have seen a number in the centre of Weobley, and around Canon Pyon in particular, marked to be done.
I’m delighted to see parish councils making the most of the grants available for fixing local drainage and footpath issues. In particular, we continue to see the great energy and innovation of the Weobley footpath team reaching further afield – getting more bridges fixed, and saving us (ultimately you, as council tax payers) money at the same time. High on the list now are two bridges in Dilywn, on DW17 and DW19. There’s been good support for drainage and flood risk mitigation across all 5 of my parishes (Weobley, Dilywn, Pyons Group, Foxley, Birley & Upper hill) and I’m particularly glad to see the support for works at Knapton and Orchard Close in Dilwyn. I’ll be working with parishes to make sure that we are as ready as we can be for the floods that will likely follow this drought – with the soil this dry, any serious rain is not going to be soaked up quickly at all.
Last month I mentioned that I was looking into the shortage of bridleways across the county. I’m delighted that this has been picked up by a number of riders, and there is a meeting happening later this month to try and work out what can be done.
A quick note of my regular complaint that the funding of local services is stacked against rural areas, such as ours; and the importance of us managing budgets. The government’s “Fairer Funding Review” – most consider it anything but – has left Herefordshire one of the most neglected counties in the country. We are having to work hard to find savings despite increased costs and demands. Some examples of this are the project with the John Haider building in Hereford to provide more cost-effective homelessness accommodation, and the increased habit among our officers to write their own reports, not outsouce to external consultants. After all, we typically know the area better than most. It is noteworthy that many of our neighbouring councils took the decision to ask for government bail-outs; it might seem easy, but that has left them paying a 6% charge against loans counted in 100s of millions of pounds.
I continue to watch with interest the new government under Andy Burnham. These are encouraging noises about communities, pubs, buses, and true devolution – but it’ll be harder to make happen than just to announce, and in any event he has bigger issues to fix. Certainly we do need to see something change in the way that Whitehall treats parts of the country that aren’t based around a city – and I am not sure if Burnham’s “Manchesterism” is the answer to that. But I’m an optimist, and there is a chance to get our voice heard, and the broken system fixed.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed a lovely summer, the heat notwithstanding. As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me: 07884 268624, or [email protected]