A move to invest an additional £1m in the repair of shallower 'pot-holes' across the county failed this week, when councillors met to set the county council's budget for 2025/6 this week.

Currently pot-holes in Hertfordshire have to be in excess of 50mm deep in order to qualify as a so-called 'category one' repair by the county council.

But on Tuesday (25 February) Labour councillors called for a £1m trial that would reduce that minimum depth by 20 per cent – to 40mm.

Presenting the Labour amendment to the Conservative budget, Cllr Ian Albert said that the Conservative administration had "failed" residents on pot-holes.

And welcoming additional funding from the government for roads and pot-hole repairs, he put forward the proposal to trial a 40mm repair criteria.

He said the £1m cost of the trial had be obtained from council officers, but suggested that, in his view, it could "cost less" – and that as a long tern initiative it would save the county money.

But the proposal was slammed by the Conservative executive member for highways and transport Cllr Phil Bibby, who suggested it would be "irresponsible" to invest in a trial to reduce intervention levels without a commitment to continue "for years two, three and four and beyond".

In a further amendment Liberal Democrat councillors had also called for a trial, so that where a pot-hole did qualify for repair other smaller pot-holes nearby would be fixed at the same time.

And making the case for multiple repairs to me made at the same time, Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst pointed to an example where a broken pavement had been repaired around a dead tree stump – only for a team to have to go back again.

"It costs us double," he said. "That's the problem with the system – and the Conservatives aren't fixing it."

Cllr Giles Medhurst said the council faced more than 1000 insurance claims from motorists a year – spending £250k on insurance claims.

But he said the council's immediate response was to deny responsibility – not even checking if a pot-hole was there until a claim was made.

And he said: "That is abhorrent quite frankly and it is not the way we should be treating Hertfordshire residents.

"We have to change the regime. Yes we would like to have more money, but the money we have got should go further and be better maintained."

In response to the Liberal Democrat proposal Cllr Bibby said that a trial where multiple repairs – so-called category ones and category twos – were completed at the same time would "cost extra" and would tie up crews.

And he pointed to the zero funding allocation that had been made to it as part of the Liberal Democrat amendment.

Backing the highways element of the county council's budget proposals, Cllr Bibby said the council was "well placed for the next year and beyond, with the achievable ambition of having the best roads in the southeast".

And he said: "The condition of Hertfordshire roads is consistently above average, compared to national statistics. And we are amongst the best in the southeast region.

"Going forward the total budget for highways and transport is just above £200m – which includes the over £100m for maintenance of our roads, footways and cycle ways."

Within that he said £60m would be used to increase focus on 'cat one' defects, which he said were increasing with the extreme wet conditions, as well as unclassified roads, replacement of ageing vehicle restraint systems and lighting columns.

Overall the county council set a services budget of £1.18bn for 2025/26 at the meeting.

Liberal Democrat and Labour amendments were rejected by the meeting of the full council, with the Conservative majority backing the budget proposals – known as the Integrated Plan or IP – as presented.