At Wednesday night’s Full Council meeting, I put forward a motion designed to support Hertsmere Borough Council in its attempt to encourage our County Council to deal with the state of our roads and pavements.

I gave a speech explaining how we all regularly use certain roads and pavements strewn with potholes, cracks and other defects, making it a challenge walk, cycle or even drive along them. During this speech I also teased those councillors who choose to drive gas guzzling 4x4’s, as being the only ones who can use our roads without fear of personal injury or damage to their vehicles. One or two of them who got the joke, playfully chastised me after the meeting for my little dig.

You may be interested to know that there are over 3.5 million potholes on British roads, more than enough to fill a few hundred Albert Halls. The backlog will take more than 11 years to repair them all.

Here in Hertfordshire, the trigger to get a pot hole repaired is 40 mm for carriageways and 20mm for footways, or just over 1.5 inches in old money.

Although budgets have been increased over the past six years and with the recent announcements of a further 3 year settlement that will allow further significant funding for road maintenance, we need our local authority to be more proactive and not to leave defects until they deteriorate to the point that repairs become urgent and ultimately more expensive.

This isn’t about the car user alone, as our poor pavements and roads make travel for other road users such as pedestrians and cyclists much more vulnerable to accidents.

Only last week the Borehamwood Times reported on the case of Jack Gardner, a 93 year old former councillor for this area, who suffered serious injuries after tripping over an uneven pavement slab in Borehamwood, who then sued the County Council and received £8,500 compensation in an out of court settlement.

When I am out canvassing on the door step, this is one of the top three issues people are expressing their fury about (fyi, bins and youth facilities are the other two). I encourage them to complain directly to the County Council, whether they actually go on to do that is another matter altogether. However, if Hertsmere Borough Councillors using the voice and platform we have at our disposal cannot get the county council to acknowledge this, then what chance will a lone resident have of being heard?

My original motion was “This Council recognises that the level of road and pavement maintenance in Hertsmere is unacceptable and demand that the County Council take action to rectify this.” A very clear and strong message in both its language and aspiration, or so I thought.

Now I have yet to see a motion put forward by any non Tory group councillor that is accepted in its original format, this motion was no exception to that rule.

After I gave my opening speech, the Conservative ruling group then moved a further motion to amend my original wording, which would make the motion now read, “This council recognises that the level of road and pavement maintenance in Hertsmere is not of a high enough standard and insists that the County Council present their plans for improving the Boroughs roads to members of this authority as soon as possible”.

Did you spot the subtle difference?

To be honest, it was still a good message to send and I didn’t really have a major problem with most of their suggested changes. The words “insists” and “demands” are neither here nor there and the insertion of “as soon as possible”, whilst leaving the County Council some wriggle room in terms of timing, it didn’t cause me a huge amount of concern.

This may sound like semantics to you, but the one alteration that really disappointed me, was the change that turned the word “unacceptable” into “not of a high enough standard".

This motion and potential Full Council “swan song” for me, was meant to be all about us sending the strongest message possible back to the County Council. For many councillors in the room, “not of a high enough standard” implied that the level is currently acceptable, somehow okay or not too bad, but we would like you to please try a little bit harder.

"Not of a high enough standard", is how my Dad described my O level results, or it depicts someone trying to get into Oxford University but who didn’t quite get the grades they needed.

The amendment then went to the vote and of course like a blue Mexican wave, 28 conservative hands naturally shot up in support of the changes, whist the entire Liberal and Labour group of 11 councillors, all unanimously voted for the motion to remain in its original form.

So although the attention grabbing title of this blog is slightly facetious, by default our 28 Tory Borough Councillors did in fact all agree that the current level of road and pavement maintenance in Hertsmere is acceptable.

I was disappointed that after 20 minutes of discussion, we couldn't find agreement on this subject and I thought of Jack Gardner spending two years recovering from the injuries he sustained just because he wanted to go to the shops and couldn’t do so without tripping over our poorly maintained pavements. That is “unacceptable” to me.

So the good news, my motion was passed and the request in its softer form will now be sent, but my question to you is this. What message would you like to have seen us send to County Council on this issue? Do think that the level of road and pavement maintenance in Hertsmere is “not of a high enough standard”, or should we have told them it is “unacceptable” or both?