CALLS for a review of the county’s highways were met with unanimous support at yesterday’s (June 29) full council meeting.

The latest performance indicators showed “below par” satisfaction levels, leading to Cllr Paul Hodgkinson requesting a detailed analysis by Gloucestershire County Council’s (GCC) Environment and Scrutiny Committee.

Cllr Hodgkinson, speaking at the Shire Hall meeting, said: “What I’m saying to the administration is, you have to get to grips with these continued road failings. We as county councillors aren’t happy, we’re very clear about that, and neither are our parish and town councils, and the figures show it.

“From poor communication from the contractors about whether things will be fixed to lack of action on promises made to dangerous potholes, which everyone’s swerving to avoid, people talk to me about this on a daily basis.

“And it’s not just about potholes, it’s also about drain clearance, it’s about signage. You name it, they’re concerned about it.”

Cllr Joe Harris agreed, accusing the cabinet of being “in denial about the issues.”

He said: “We hear bluff and bluster. You’re starting to make excuses – blaming everybody else. It’s blaming the weather, it’s blaming the councillors for not reporting things. It’s ridiculous. You need to take responsibility of this issue and you’re not doing that.”

Cllr Vernon Smith, GCC cabinet member for highways, accepted that “more work needs to be done to look at communications with councillors and parish councils” but argued that public opinion is “above target and improving,” according to the latest figures published by the council.

He said: “To me the public are the most important and what I care about. The hardworking taxpayers of Gloucestershire – the men and women out there driving on these roads.

“Now, I accept that there’s 48 per cent of the public still think roads are poor – I accept they need to be better, but we’re going in the right direction.”

GCC recently announced a further £3m of funding into its road repair budget for the upcoming year.

Referring to the unanimous vote for a detailed analysis of satisfaction levels, Cllr Smith said: "I welcome this decision as a useful way of looking at that."

Cllr Stan Waddington, scrutiny committee member, argued that communication levels are continuing to get better, with highways contractor Amey having developed an improved system to be available to councillors in the coming months.

He said it “uses mapping to record in your division a record of all the potholes that have been reported, the repairs that have been carried out, the patching programmes that are intended on your patch, the location of every gully on your patch, when it was last emptied, when it is due for emptying again.

“I think that information is going to help us enormously in discharging our duties as councillors, and that will also be available to our parish councils.”

The scrutiny committee will report back on its analysis at the full council meeting on December 7.