By Lynn Postle
A row broke out this week between Herefordshire Council and Paul Keetch MP, after he was said to have wrongly accused the local authority of failing to apply for government funding to repair roads damaged by last summer’s flooding.
Mr Keetch lashed out at the council saying he had been told by the Department of Transport that the council had not taken up an offer to claim for public funds.
The council hit back saying it has been awarded £2 million which has been used to repair the county’s flood-damaged roads.
A claim has also been submitted to the Restoration Fund to help finance more general flood alleviation work.
Councillor Brian Wilcox, the council’s cabinet member of highways and transportation said: “If Paul Keetch MP had contacted the council to check whether we had claimed for flood damage for our road network, we could have saved him the embarrassment of firing off a press release that showed he was out of his depth on the issue.”
Meanwhile the council says work to the Ross Flood Alleviation Scheme is making good progress again, after overcoming difficulties with the tunnelling works causing inconvenience to some residents.
There were problems boring through the rock and adjustments had to be made to the tunnel boring machine, a conveyor system also had to be introduced to deal with the material that was removed.
A 24-hour working pattern has been adopted between Monday and Friday for the tunnelling work to regain lost time and alterations have been made to keep the noise down, including the building of an acoustic fence alongside the brook.
The council says the tunnelling machine still has 220m of the 350 m long tunnel to dig to reach breakthrough at Kings Acre car park.
So far completed work includes the construction of two bridges, installation of 150m of precast concrete culvert and general watercourse improvements, all to the Rudhall Brook.
The major work outstanding above ground is the earth bund situated east of the A40 which the council says is now well on the way to completion in August.
Work will continue to the end of the year to make the scheme fully operational.
