Month: January 2026

Protection and Restoration of the River Wye and tributaries

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From the Herefordshire Council Sustainability and Climate Change team:

Herefordshire’s third annual Rivers Conference in late November 2025 brought together farmers, landowners, environmental groups and industry experts to look at innovative new solutions to help protect and restore the River Wye and tributaries.

The conference covered projects underway on Wye tributaries the rivers Arrow, Lugg and Frome, findings from key national research, and progress with local pilots.

You can watch a short highlights video, as well as recordings of the presentations and the panel discussions from the day via: https://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/rivers-conference

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact climate@herefordshire.gov.uk

 

Ward Councillor for Penyard report – January 2026

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Ward Report January 2026 – Penyard Ward

Christmas is usually a season for giving but I’m afraid there were no nice gifts from the Government as in mid December they announced firstly, they were withdrawing the funding for a local School for children with special Educational needs. The School would have supported 80 children aged between 2- 16. There are significant increases in the number of children identifying as having special needs across the country, and while we expect the Government`s white paper this month to retain most of those children in mainstream school, there will be a cohort where it is best for those children, and for the rest of a  mainstream class, to receive more focused attention in a specialist centre. The government has replaced it with an offer of £3.8 million of high needs capital over a three year period only.

Secondly, a disappointing  Local Government Three year Finance Settlement announced means we need to make some difficult decisions on budgets, The combination of central government’s new funding approach, rising service demand, and the growing costs of delivering services to across a large rural county, will make an impact on our budget for 2026/27 and beyond. The government made some last-minute changes to the review earlier this Autumn which disproportionally benefit councils in London and metropolitan boroughs at the expense of all county and rural areas, with hundreds of millions of more funding to be diverted from rural to urban areas over the next three years. These last-minute changes, implemented against the available evidence, raises serious questions over whether ministers are unfairly cherry picking which councils benefit from extra funding.

THE BYPASS

Work progresses with the Phase 1 Hereford bypass. Cabinet agreed on 18th December, to the Compulsory Purchase of required land should negotiations not produce individual negotiated agreements. It is expected that Heads of Terms for all land purchases will be agreed soon, negating the need for the CPO. The preferred Contractor through the procurement tendering process will be announced early in the new year.

HIGHWAYS – THE PUBLIC REALM

Herefordshire Council has approved a new contract and selected a preferred provider to deliver public realm services across the county, to replace the current arrangement with Balfour Beatty. The services include the maintenance of roads, roadsides, green areas and public spaces, street cleansing, highway drainage, street lighting and winter gritting. The selected provider can be named in January after a mandatory legal standstill period comes to an end, with the new contract set to begin this June.

This will see the council take back day-to-day control of public realm services with the contractor being paid pre-agreed rates for each item of work, focussing on high quality, value for money services. I particularly welcome the current Balfour Stewards transferring to the council employment with tighter ordering and monitoring of the contract on the ground.

Over the past 18 months we have seen increased investment in the condition of Herefordshire’s highways through resurfacing and surface dressing work, with some 100 miles having been delivered during 2025/26 alone. Significant renewals have taken place on the network and we have also increased the amount of funding that we have spent on preventative maintenance. The latter is strongly encouraged by the Department for Transport, details of which we are required to report on to access additional government funding. Locally we will have seen many areas of improvements .

Maintaining the surface condition of an entire highway network is something that clearly never stops and there is always a location that requires some form of intervention, which will vary dependant on what stage it is at in its lifecycle. Like other highway authorities, it is not possible to do everything overnight, but we plan to continue improving the condition of Herefordshire’s highways in 2026/27, building on what we have achieved over the past 18 months.

As we move into a new calendar year, work  begins to shape a programme of works for 2026/27, which will be guided by the technical condition data obtained from our SCANNER, Vaisala and other survey information (including defects raised through the Locality Steward inspection process). Whilst technical condition data underpins and forms a fundamental and objective part of the planning process, I am encouraged to let the Highways team know of any locations in the ward that are causing  particular concern at this time and request a sense check as part of the programme development. Many of you have already reported significant defects to me already – please continue to do so – even if your particular stretch of road is yet to be done  – it is on the long list !

 

Please contact me on 07900 918384 – if you would like advise or to report matters in Penyard Ward. I am always delighted to attend any Parish Council meetings upon hearing that my presence is requested by the Clerk.

So as we enter the second quartile of the twenty first century – I should like to wish you all a healthy and prosperous New Year.

 

Councillor  Harry Bramer – Herefordshire Council – Penyard Ward

Cabinet Member – Community Services and Assets