twowheelsgood

"the sum to be withheld from payment on performance grounds, had not been served in the correct form." So our very highly paid senior officers, presumably from the legal team, failed to serve notice in the correct form and thus lost one of the claims - but aren't these officers so highly paid because we have to pay for the best? I seem to recall a much trumpeted £1m a year saving when this privatisation was foisted upon us at the start of the 10 year period. So, a (possible) £10m saving is rounded out with a possible £40m counter-claim - at the very least, legal fees will wipe out any saving that was made by this catastrophic error by councillors. Seems like the only winner was the officer who set it all up and walked away with £0.25m.

I believe the Lib Dems were out canvassing around St Owens St today.

Maybe? Something? Hardly the response one would expect from a business charged with championing tourism in the county - particularly as she is the managing director. Their website says "Tourism is Herefordshire’s second biggest economy worth over £466 million in 2011, providing more than 8,500 FTE jobs within the county. With over 7,500,000 tourist days enjoyed within the county …"

Because they've realised they can take the money for a service and then not deliver it and no one in control is bothered? (Although the A49 is Highways Agency responsibility). Try the Hereford to Sutton road - unbelievable mess. The cross the border into Wales and you can go for miles without seeing a single piece of litter.

12 weeks IS a long time when it is offensive - particularly when the Council's website states; "We aim to remove graffiti of a sexual, racial or offensive (contains expletives) nature within 24 hours." If I submit a report via the proper channel ie the Council website specific form page for such matters, I expect it to be dealt with. I do not expect to have to contact a dozen different bodies - there lies the route to madness and often they are outside my ward anyway. I honestly believe that 98% of all reports forwarded to BB by the Council are simply binned.

Some careful wording in that report; "As part of the link-road project these areas will have flood alleviation measures proposed to mitigate an existing flood risk in this area, but these would not support fire service mobilisation from a site in the event of flooding and there are known specific issues with the site that may make a development as a fire station cost-prohibitive. As has already been indicated, the Bath Street location is unlikely to proceed any further." So the flood proofed site is ruled out because it will flood ... and has 'known specific issues' which make it cost prohibitive. I wonder how the latter will impact on the cost of the road itself then.

Chris, I've reported hundreds of issues with blocked gullies, racist graffiti, other graffiti, potholes, fly tipping, rubbish and more since BB took over - either via 'fixmystreet' or directly to the council - I can honestly say that no more than half a dozen issues have been fixed in that period. Even the racist graffiti took 12 weeks to be cleaned and numerous chasing by me, even using the Council's facebook page couldn't sort that one. In short, no one who is paid to gives a stuff about the environment we live in. That multi-million pound greenway bridge you cut the ribbon on? Covered in graffiti. I reported it all 3 months ago - still there. How is Joe Bloggs supposed to know who to report things to - how many have heard of locality stewards? I'm going to send a long list of issues to mine and see what happens.

flam - this is a 'new scheme', requiring many meetings at strategy level, much discussion on how to reinvent the wheel, many reports, much officer time and all to fundamentally hide the fact that Parish Councils will be obliged to do much more for less money.

The lengthsman scheme is a very good idea - local man/men on the ground, doing routine maintenance in a timely manner - how it should be. I know they've done it in Hampton Bishop and it worked very well - the improvement in ditches and verges - and the reduction in local flooding as result - was marked. However, talking to a parish clerk the other day (not Hampton Bishop) why was I not surprised to learnt that not only are Parish Councils now expected to fund this themselves, they will also be expected to take on road repairs for unclassified, C and B roads and not receive any funding for that either. The backlog of work on our highways is still massive - on a very wet bike ride on Sunday, I lost count of the number of blocked gullies - creating standing water hiding potholes, all potentially lethal for two wheeled traffic, as well as breaking down verges. Some lanes were no better than rutted tracks and the amount of litter on the verges was just staggering. Road signs are dirty, damaged or missing, road markings have worn away and are not being repainted. Balfour Beatty can spin it any which way they want in their glossy report, but the evidence to the contrary is plain to see and the bottom line is that we're being fleeced by them and the Council continue to condone it.

Wards are being shuffled around for the elections - we will lose two councillors but have more wards in the City - each ward will have only one councillor, so there will be no hiding for a lot of them who are happy to do very little at the moment because there are one or two other councillors they can blame/push the work onto/hide behind etc.

Having seen the process first hand at a pothole near me recently - white paint is to indicate a 'temporary' repair is needed - it is photographed and logged via a tablet by the BB man, so it will be logged on the system. Yellow paint indicates a permanent repair is needed. That said, I have seen many, many 'white holes' where the paint has disappeared whilst out on my bike and the hole has not been even temporarily filled months later (and of course has grown exponentially during that time). This was even worse under Amey, who only used white paint, and who I am sure claimed for work that was never done - paint it, claim it, forget it.

It was named Central Park in 2008 following a consultation by the Friends of Central Park - the official name was Portfields Open Space and, yes, it was known locally as The Pit, which the Friends acknowledged on their website. The 'pit' in question was probably from quarrying gravel and was infilled by excavation, including many skeletons, when the Council dug the 'new' inner relief road through the Daws Road graveyard. http://friendsofcentralpark.org

Council seem to be keeping progress on this sale very quiet - tired old 'commercial confidentiality' excuse again?

It was great success despite the rain, and then the darned rain and then the rain on top of the rain! It did make the climbing wall a bit slippy, but no one seemed to mind - we had over a hundred people through the course of the event, quite possibly including dippyhippy, but that's not for me to say! We're planning to repeat the same thing on 21 March, so please make a note in your diaries.

What pray is a £4.5k 'Market Forces Supplement' and why should it paid? A quick google shows it to be endemic throughout local authorities - so just the old boys, or common purpose, feathering each others nest then?

megilleland - absolutely spot on and profoundly depressing post. When you start to pull together all the posts you begin to realise the size of the problem and that no amount of complaining gets anything done. Personally I'm sick to death of having to look at dirt and litter and graffiti anywhere I go in this city or county and the verges outside the city are shocking. Wherever profit is a motive before service, we the rate payers and residents will get shafted and we are being royally done so under BB.

Perhaps the Council will send some middle managers on these courses - they had no hesitation in paying £68000 for Common Purpose training for staff after all.

Yazoo - 80's popsters! Yazor - stagnant and undervalued brook! Joking aside, this is awful - who is the ward councillor - they should be all over this and telling Balfour Beatty to do what they're paid to do. Its also increasing the flood load on that area. Litter generally is getting markedly worse everywhere - the verges when I'm out cycling just beggar belief in places. Its often the same person lobbing the same brand can out of the window in the same place everyday, becauseI'll often see a large pile of (say) red bull cans within a very short stretch of road.

Why have they shrink wrapped it? Is it so that we won't know what it is?

https://www.facebook.com/itsourcounty But they only have the first two days.

Pity the poor child, scarred for life from being made to smile whilst standing next to so many hypocrites. And why the safety goggles? Was it a hostile audience? This is no better than politicians kissing babies on the campaign trail - deeply cynical and counter-productive.

Perhaps its because the council are up to their sneaky tricks (*as below)? It can't be incompetence, because we are paying for 'the best' officers (a lot of money) can buy. Perhaps its because the chances of them actually listening to the public are, as we know only too well, close to zero. Not even the press can be bothered to attend. *From Here for Hereford; There was much frustration shown at the end of a long day on Tuesday when after 5pm the public and developers were told that Herefordshire Council had posted new evidence on their website. One of these documents, an HRA report (prepared by LUC working for Herefordshire Council ) had been in the Council’s possession since Sept 2014, but the Council had failed to make it public until the day before the issues to which it related were due to be discussed.

Saw Mr Wiggin on the first of the BBC Commons series last week - suffice to say his demeanour did not match the claims he was making in the Hereford Times about 'helping' the BBC. The programme as a whole was absolutely fascinating.

This is history now, but it was probably the start of the offloading of public assets to largely unaccountable bodies. Whilst I don't fundamentally object to this, as it can often mean they are a given new lease of life by funding streams otherwise not available, I do object to the year on year rise of council tax when the services provided by the Council is ever more diminishing and what is provided is to such a poor standard it's simply a waste of limited money. I don't know what the answer is - whilst common sense says go smaller, get back to basics and do them well, the lust for power is driving councils to become bigger by merging as well as deferring to autonomous bodies such as the Marches LEP.

Here is a good summary from Here for Hereford http://www.hereforhereford.co.uk/2015/02/examination-of-core-strategy-is-the-plan-sound/ Cloudberry is right - top quality agricultural land should not be built on and lost forever - a rising population and with ever increasing unrest in the world will see more wars and we need to be far more self sufficient than we are.