Hertfordshire council officials are going out to measure potholes on a road in Wheathamstead every week – to see if they are deep enough to repair, according to the local county councillor.

Residents of Hitchin worried about the state of their roads may need to get their rulers out to see if they meet the 50mm "minimum depth" to qualify for repair.

Liberal Democrat Cllr Allison Wren says the 'dozens' of pot-holes on The Hill are causing a great deal of angst in the village.

But, she says, they don't yet meet the 50mm minimum depth to qualify as a 'category one' repair.

And she says technicians are visiting the road every week to see if they have reached the level of intervention.

Cllr Wren highlighted the practice – which she suggested was 'not the best way of spending money' – at a meeting of the council's highways and transport cabinet panel on Tuesday (November 26).

Presenting a motion on funding for road maintenance, she pointed to a current 'pause' on maintenance for those pot-holes that didn't meet 'category one' intervention levels.

And, in practice, that means that currently the county council are only carrying out repairs to pot-holes that exceed 50mm in depth and are 300mm wide.

Cllr Wren had suggested that without intervention many smaller 'category two' potholes would become 'category one' pot-holes over the winter.

And – pointing to an additional £7.6m allocated for road maintenance – she had asked officers to outline the reasons for this pause to suggest how long it would continue for.

In response director of highways and strategic operations Anthony Boucher said that the weather over last two years had contributed to an increasing number of 'category one' defects on highway network, where repairs have a safety focus. And he said it was "highly unlikely" maintenance of 'category two' pot-holes would recommence in the 2024/25 financial year.

'Category two' works are those where repairs are intended to keep the road network 'serviceable', but are not deemed to require urgent intervention.

Liberal Democrat Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst suggested that pausing work on the lesser 'category two' pot-holes could potentially increase 'category one' spending.

He suggested repairs were being made to the same pieces of road within months, when pot-holes meeting 'category one' intervention levels were repaired but smaller pot-holes alongside were 'ignored'.

He pointed to Breakspeare Road, in Abbots Langley,  where smaller pot-holes had been 'ignored' while repairs were made to potholes in excess of 50/60mm.

But then – within six months – they had had to return to the same stretch of road to fix the pot-holes that had been 'ignored' first time around.

And he asked whether the council was actually "spending money excessively" by not fixing the fault first time around.

In response, executive member for highways and transport Cllr Phil Bibby pointed to constraints on funding – and the amount of materials contractors could carry on their vans.

"The fact is we have a budget and we cannot overspend that budget, so we are managing the funds the best way we can," he said.

And he added: "Although we would like to, 'one and done' does not work with 'category one' interventions, unfortunately.

"It works in other preventative maintenance, but in 'category one' interventions you have to get in and out quickly, as cheaply, as possible – because that's a very expensive way to fix roads. And that's why we don't fix all the minor pot-holes at the same time"

"We'd run out of Tarmac. We'd run out of money. We'd run out of time. We wouldn't be able to get round to the safety-related issues in time."

Cllr Bibby later acknowledged that every penny spent on preventative maintenance would save £5 on reactive maintenance.

He said decades and decades of under-investment in roads could not be ignored.

But he said they were doing the best with the money that they had got to keep the roads safe and operational.

During the meeting of the highways and transport cabinet panel Liberal Democrat Clr Stephen Giles-Medhurst also drew attention to the increasing weight of vehicles.

He suggested that electric vehicles were now between 50 and 75 per cent heavier than traditional diesel or petrol vehicles.

And he pointed to the impact these heavier vehicles would have on the condition of the county's roads.

But Conservative Cllr Jonathan Kaye suggested that the it was HGVs and refuse lorries that were more likely to cause the bigger problems on the roads.

He said advances in technology meant EV batteries were getting lighter.

And moving the focus away from electric cars he highlighted the move towards the purchase of heavier SUVs, whether electric, petrol or diesel.

In response, director of highways and strategic operations Anthony Boucher said it was HGVs that are the biggest cause of deterioration of roads surfaces.

"The size of vehicles increasing has certainly affected the rural network, in particular- particularly with the size of the vehicle now coming to the edge of where the road meets the verge," he said.

"So it's causing some line deterioration in the centre lines, because the vehicles are wider."

But he said the main impact on highway surfaces was from HGVs – which he said related to the weight of an HGV and the turning of the axle.

And he said this was why motorways and other heavily trafficked A roads were built to different standards than most other roads.