With the state of our local roads creating ever increasing risk, aggravation and expense for all who use them, County Councillor Ros Hathorn is calling on residents across our community to come together and form a local action group. She shares with HI HUB how, as a community, we can collectively challenge those in power.
I have been pushing really hard to get highways action in Histon and Impington. Every time I leave my home I see the state of the roads here and notice the defects.
I absolutely understand that we need more action.
I have reached the view that the best way to challenge the Highways Service to fill potholes and fix roads here is to pull together a local group to collect local data, expressed in the terms the Highways Service responds to and to keep track of what is happening over time.
Data collection is key
What this probably needs is a group of volunteers prepared to take on the busiest and worst roads in the village and start collecting data. The County Council asks that when you see a highways fault you report it via the council’s Report a Fault system.
What I am then seeing is that reports are not always looked at, work is not always ordered, ordered work may not happen, and finished jobs may be poor quality. This is the data I believe we need to collect locally to challenge the council. I suspect a good deal of the problems we see here are because, of all the district areas in Cambridgeshire, South Cambs feels like it is the hardest to manage. It is big, a really funny shape and has lots of traffic.
As a councillor I have exactly the same access to data as residents do – I can see the Report a Fault map and I can click into every individual fault and look at the timelines there. I regularly challenge the council about outstanding faults and normally get some action but I believe that as a community we could operate more effectively in terms of lobbying for work if we had our own data. So I am asking for volunteers.
Volunteers needed!
It wouldn’t be a massive monthly commitment. Each month I’d ask volunteers to look at their road, report any faults and then log various bits of data into a central spreadsheet – basically as a group for us all just to keep track of the status quo and progress.
Anyone who wants to get involved needs to be prepared to be patient as there are no quick fixes but together this feels like the most effective way we can hold the council to account and try to get a fair share of the work we need to see here.
Separately there is the emerging ‘communities fixing their own potholes’ piece of work the county is trying roll out but, for the majority of the works, holding the council to account remains the best approach.
If you’d like to be involved I propose an initial meeting at the Rose & Crown at 7pm on Tuesday 2 June. Alternatively, email me with your thoughts at ros.hathorn@cambridgeshire.gov.uk. As a community, let’s pull together and challenge those in power.
READ MORE: volunteers could be trained to fix potholes and Council more than triples pothole crews as repairs surge
Thanks Ros, I love this idea. Be great to have this in other villages too and consider a similar principle for overgrown hedges and gullies that maybe missing from the maps. Hope to be there if I can.