Tory broken roads - A symbol of a broken Nottinghamshire!

When I was growing up, I was always taught that to deal with a problem – you have to recognise the problem. That’s something that I have passed on to my children. Neil Clarke’s comments in this paper are illustrative of the problems we face with our highways. They are living in cloud cuckoo land. I would like to make it clear that, unlike others, I am not clamouring for Neil Clarke’s MBE to be returned like Paula Vennells from the Post Office. We feel that at this time, it would be a distraction from actually doing what he promised – that being to fix our broken roads and pavements and stopping the botched jobs.

Last week, I invited Ashfield Council Leader Jason Zadrozny to see first hand the deterioration of the roads and pavements across the Selston Parish that I represent at County Hall. To say they are diabolical is an understatement. I took Jason to Flatts Lane in Westwood to show him a pot-hole that is the size of a coffee table.

This pot-hole has hit the headlines as the ‘worst in Nottinghamshire, probably the country.’ Others across the county say they have similar problems – Kirkby Councillor Andy Meakin claimed he had found worse. Councillor Kane Oliver from Eastwood queried whether I was right and sent me photos to prove it. I had phone calls from Gedling, from Newark, from Huthwaite – all questioning whether the Flatts Lane pot-hole was the worst.

Welcome to Nottinghamshire’s broken roads and pavements.

Let’s not forget that the Conservatives have been responsible for our roads since 2017. Before that Labour. Ludicrously, Ben Bradley MP, who is standing to be your new Mayor for the toxic Tories claims he will fix them but ONLY if you vote him into a FOURTH job. The problem with this is that he said this in 2017, again in 2019, 2021 and now he is saying it again.

Residents contact me as their County Councillor on a daily basis. Their number one complaint – pot-holes and pavements. As a member of the Independent Alliance opposition group of councillors we have tried to force the Tories to act. Last year, we put in a fully costed, legal budget that would have led to over £3million being spent in Ashfield this year alone. We said we would scrap the new posh Council Offices the Tories are building at Top Wighay Farm, near Hucknall. The Tories and Labour parties voted against this despite council officers saying we could have implemented our plans from May last year.

If the Tories, who run County Hall had listened to people like Jason Zadrozny and I, we would have no need to highlight the continuing decimation of our roads. As Jason told me last week, they’d be no need to point.

Residents can have the assurance that the Ashfield Independents will continue to fight to fix our broken roads and pavements. Our highways are symbolic of a broken Nottinghamshire under the Toxic Tories and this needs to change.

Councillor David Martin

County Councillor for the Selston Division and Chair of Selston Parish Council