Herts County Council has drawn up plans to take on three extra staff to deal with correspondence about roads.

Council officers say that the highways team get so much correspondence – from councillors, MPs and members of the public – that they need to take on extra staff.

According to county council budget proposals it will cost an additional £87,000.

The plans to recruit the additional staff emerged at a meeting of the highways and environment cabinet panel on Friday (February 5), in response to a question from Liberal Democrat Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst.

County council officer Anthony Boucher explained to councillors: "As a service highways gets a huge amount of correspondence from members, from the public, from MPs.

"And we went through the resourcing in the team and we decided we needed at least three more people – just to keep up to speed with the current levels of correspondence that is coming in.

"So this money is to beef that team up a little bit , so they can deal with what is currently coming in."

The council's budget proposals will be considered and voted upon at a virtual meeting of the full county council on February 23, at 10am.

That meeting can be viewed at www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/watchmeetings