06 Feb 2024
“Hertfordshire County Council is a disgrace, and you can quote me on this.”
That is the damning opinion of St Albans council leader – and county councillor – Chris White in the wake of weeks of disruption caused by roadworks across the city centre.
Temporary traffic lights, closed roads, queuing vehicles, noise from nightworks, the chaos experienced by local residents has been unprecedented over the past few months.
For example, when Victoria Street was closed unexpectedly for overnight roadworks, residents living in Liverpool Road received no notification that their street would be inaccessible by car, and then found themselves unable to sleep.
One homeowner said: “It was impossible to get the night sleep it is reasonable to expect. There were loud noises from beeping vehicles and pneumatic drills and our house was shaking.
“We had been given no adequate warning of what to expect and opportunity to make adequate alternative arrangements.”
Cllr White has since put in a formal complaint about communications, the unnecessary disruption and the failure to cancel the works despite his protestations to director level.
“Victoria Street is a good example I think. I received a list in early November of streets which were going to have roadworks. But it was just a list of streets, vaguely in my area, and says there are going to be works. It doesn’t say anything else.
“So you go back and say, what are the works? And either they ignore you or sometimes they do tell you. If the works are clearly resurfacing, that’s fine.
“But what it does absolutely not say is two things. It does not say what the exact date is, because the length of time of the traffic order is always 18 months.
“Secondly, they didn’t say that they had decided, without consultation with me or someone with a brain, to do it overnight.
“And then the third thing, on top of that, is that they failed either to put up signs two weeks in advance, which is the rule, or stick things through people’s doors two weeks in advance. They were doing it in the afternoon beforehand.
“I protested to Mark Doran, who is the executive director, and nothing happened. So my complaint also includes the fact that you cannot just ignore a county councillor. You can tell the county councillor that he’s wrong for the following reasons… You can use a phone, actually. That’s possible. They exist, apparently. But they just ploughed on regardless.
“What they say is it’s going to cause a lot of traffic chaos if they don’t do it all in one go. Traffic chaos, in the middle of St Albans? Who would have thought that would happen? Yeah, so people with kids lose sleep all night simply to make life a bit easier for HCC.
“There are circumstances when I would do it overnight, St Peter’s Street for example, I think that would be reasonable. But it would be nice to be given the reasons, and options not considered. But none of them give any reason. It’s just HCC being useless.
“The last time I made a formal complaint was over Cavendish Road a few years ago. They told me I was wrong, it was perfectly reasonable to dig up a road, cause water leaks and run away. It’s an astonishing self-regard. That’s the last time I made a complaint, so I’m not optimistic.”
One of the other major issues is utility companies digging up roads one after the other, with all the associated delays caused by temporary traffic lights, for example the junction of London Road and Lattimore Road.
“I have two issues there. First of all, County has very weak powers by law as a consequence of privatisation. HCC do say, ‘Oh God we’ve got one of these’, and they actually move their own road work and will postpone them from time to time, so they deal with it quite well.
“With Affinity Water, they’re a bit prone to leave things on site with nobody working. Jacqui had a particularly spectacular example of Affinity being crap when I was away somewhere and she had to deal with the Paxton Road fiasco, when they dug a trench all the way along the road so nobody could get out. You couldn’t make it up.
“There are others, though, who are worse. Thames Water, the works on London Road which they said were an emergency and blocked off access to people’s homes. Often it isn’t an emergency, often it’s routine connections, so let’s not turn up in the middle of the night.
“Thames is much worse and that’s why [MP Daisy Cooper] Daisy’s had to be dealing with the Thames Water issues on Alma Road, where there’s been foul flooding and an attitude on behalf of Thames Water, which was frankly astonishing. One of the residents was told the raw sewage coming into their basement was an act of God. I mean, WTAF.”
Tony Picciuto, who owns the award-winning Buongiorno Italia shop in Lattimore Road, has been massively impacted by the closure of Alma Road, with deliveries late and customers unable to reach the shop.
He said: “It’s an absolute nightmare, and my biggest frustration is that there doesn’t appear to be any urgency to get the work done – they’re not working any earlier or later. We also had no notification of anything happening so we could prepare.
“It’s causing havoc, people are calling us up to say they just can’t get here.”
Cllr White added: “I have almost no power as a county councillor. It’s all a question of soft power. Being seen to be credible, having a title, sending a well-crafted email, and so forth. The county council has said it hasn’t got any power. But it’s a very, very large organisation which could say, ‘We’re pissed off about this, if you keep on behaving like this we’re going to go to the Minister, we’re going to go to MPs and throw our weight around a bit more’. But they don’t. I mean, I am the one, and the district council are the one, who kicks off about dirty water.
“It’s not a district council function. But someone’s got to stand up for the community.”
It does seem to be getting worse doesn’t it? “It does, I mean, and it’s not your imagination, it really isn’t. It is getting worse. I don’t remember this being a big issue, even five years ago.
“I think the thing with Thames and Affinity is infrastructure, but because they’re so remote, you don’t really talk to them.
“County, I think they’re just in chaos really. I mean I deal with various county council departments obviously, and the best by a long way is adult care services. Special educational needs, I mean, unspeakable. Highways there are some really good people, but the structure is really not very transparent, and they’ve over-delegated to Ringway, so Ringway marks its own homework most of the time.”
The St Albans Times raised these issues with Herts county council, in particular the overnight roadworks in the middle of the city centre preventing residents from sleeping, roads being closed and access prevented to homeowners, a whole string of utility works sometimes in the same road week after week, and contractors blocking pavements with their lorries and personnel and refusing to move, forcing pedestrians into the road.
A spokesperson responded: “Our contractors, Ringway, did carry out some planned works on Victoria Street overnight. Due to the nature of the road and also the requirement to block the access to The Maltings car park, the surfacing could not take place in the daytime. They have some follow-up works to carry out still and we have reduced their working hours from 7-11pm for the next shift.
“In regards to the other points, St Albans usually sees a high volume of emergency works throughout the winter period. The infrastructure is fairly old in parts and the cold weather increases the number of bursts and leaks. Quite often when a utility repairs one section of apparatus, it can weaken another point or does not
resolve the issue and then we may see a return visit unfortunately. Where residents receive no advance notice, this is usually because the works are emergency works and therefore the utility company can’t inform residents in advance as they usually would.
“On top of this we also have the usual requests to carry out planned works to stop the deterioration of apparatus and road surface.
“Our highways network management teams will always try and reschedule planned works that haven’t begun if an emergency arises to alleviate the congestion on the network.
“Once planned works have started on the network however, it can be difficult to remove them due to depth of excavations and the type of works being undertaken so there may be some instances where clashes with emergencies are unavoidable. In these cases we work hard to minimise the disruption by applying further conditions to the works.
“Where closures are in place, it may not always be possible to allow vehicular access due to safety zone requirements for the work force and passing vehicles. Pedestrian access should be allowed. If there are examples of this not happening, we can investigate but we’d need specific locations. Also if there are specific examples where a contractor has blocked a footway and is not providing safe diversions we can investigate if these are flagged to us when the incident is happening.
“Alma Road is another emergency to repair a sewer pipe that is causing damage internally in a property.”
