A list of 142 cancelled highways repair projects has been released by the county council after it came under criticism for not keeping people informed about which work was being deferred.

Elstree Road, in Elstree, as well as Brook Road and London Road, in Borehamwood, were supposed to be resurfaced by 2015 – but Hertfordshire Country Council deferred the project over fears it would overspend its budget.

The cancellations came to light when Liberal Democrat Councillor Stephen Giles-Medhurst questioned why the road resurfacing schemes had not begun when they were meant to.

After undertaking a review of its workload, the council decided to defer a number of this year's highways maintenance schemes to avoid overspending.

Rob Smith, the county council's deputy director of environment (transport and environment management) said: "So far this year, we have delivered approximately £20 million of highway maintenance schemes.

"But this has been a somewhat untypical year.

"We have had a number of financial pressures on the structural maintenance service this year, in no small part due to damage done to the network by severe wet weather last winter.

"You may recall we were successful in bidding for serveral lots of additional government funding and a further £1 million was released from Hertfordshire County Council reserves.

"However, even with this additional funding, we are not able to completely cover the additional costs and have therefore reached the point where we have had to defer the majority of the remaining maintenance work for 2014/15 in order to avoid overspending the available budget.

"I apologise for the fact you have not had advance notice of these changes."

The deferred schemes have been added to next year's IWP as an interim measure, although officers and appropriate members are looking to see if there is any possibility of delivering any of the schemes this year.

However, 108 schemes cannot be reinstated into this year's programme due to the weather constraints.