TORIES CAN'T FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME

9.53.08pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 17th Sep 2008

Despite spending millions of pounds on road maintenance, less than half of local residents are not satisfied with the speed in which potholes are fixed or with the quality of the repairs. These are the findings of a review of Essex County Council's highways maintenance initiative from the Conservative-led administration.

Commenting on the report, Cllr Tom Smith-Hughes, Liberal Democrats leader, said: "These findings make dismal enough reading on their own, but really they are shocking considering the extra tens of millions of pounds that have been ploughed into road maintenance. Liberal Democrats have repeatedly pointed out the flaws in the Conservative's handling of road repairs and this report justifies our concerns.

"The report also shows that many people are unhappy with the state of pavements. For the past several years, my group has asked the Conservatives to put more money into pavements and our request has been consistently turned down. It is blindingly obvious that our pavements are in an atrocious condition and we always get plenty of complaints from local residents who have tripped on uneven and broken pavements, fallen and injured themselves. Why the Tories have seen fit to ignore this is unfathomable.

"There are other substantial failings highlighted including the state of rural roads where, again, many people still say these are in a bad condition. Pavement and rural roads are the two top areas that people say they are concerned with according to the council's own survey.

"It seems absolutely clear that the Conservative policy of throwing money at highways maintenance and praying that the public will be hoodwinked into believing that large spend equals good roads, is not working. There is a limit to how much you can fool all the people all of the time and the Conservatives have reached that point."