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  • County leader wasted £119,000 on failed unitary bid
    Article: Oct 22, 2020
    Conservative run Herts County Council has wasted £119,000 of council tax payers' money on investigating a failed bid to turn it into a mega
    super council abolishing the 10 district and borough councils.

    Following questions raised by Liberal Democrat Group Leader Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst, it was revealed that the County Council spent
    £119,000 in the last year to explore local government reform in Herts. This was £107,000 on consultancy fees with Price Waterhouse Cooper and £12,000 on officers' salaries as staff were diverted to work on the project as requested by the Conservative Leader of the Council, David Williams.

    Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst said, " This is a sickening waste of money especially now that the idea of local government reform in Herts
    has been taken off the agenda for the foreseeable future. The reports and spend were kept secret from opposition councillors in an underhand way.

    "What is very concerning is that the majority of this money was spent and work was commissioned during the on-going pandemic. An Assistant Director from Adult Social Care was moved to work on this and that is a disgrace. This just goes to show that the Conservatives cannot get priorities right and have wasted council taxpayers' money that could have been spent on supporting local business."
  • Conservative County Council refuses to support Marcus Rashford's Free School Meal appeal
    Article: Oct 22, 2020

    At Tuesday's meeting of Hertfordshire County Council the Lib Dem motion supporting Marcus Rashford's proposal to extend Free School Meals through the holidays until Easter 2021, the leader of the Council, David Williams, and the Executive Member for Education, Libraries and Localism instructed their group to vote against it and the motion was defeated.

  • CONSERVATIVES REFUSE TO BACK LOCAL BUSINESSES
    Article: Oct 21, 2020

    Conservatives at Herts County Council have refused to back Herts businesses affected by Covid closures and to help businesses recover from the impacts of the pandemic. Liberal Democrat councillors had proposed that the council should tell the government that more support for businesses was needed alongside timely, evidence based and effective action to tackle the pandemic as the survival of many local businesses is on a knife-edge thanks to the second wave.

  • ARE THEY JOKING? JUST HOW SERIOUS ARE THE CONSERVATIVES AT COUNTY HALL ABOUT REDUCING CAR SPEEDS IN TOWN CENTRES
    Article: Sep 8, 2020

    The county council is currently consulting on a new Speed Management Strategy for Hertfordshire roads. But questions must now be asked as to whether it is serious after an astonishing admission by Cllr Phil Bibby, the Conservative portfolio holder for highways at County Hall. In an email to St Albans Lib Dem county councillor Sandy Walkington, Cllr Bibby wrote 'this does not significantly alter our policy on 20 mph speed limits… In fact, there may be less scope for 20 mph areas/zones…'

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