NORTH Herefordshire MP Sir Bill Wiggin has questioned whether the county’s main public works contractor is qualified to spend over £100 million resurfacing the county’s roads.

Herefordshire Council has pledged to spend ‘record sums’ fixing the region’s highways, in the wake of a nationwide survey that declared the county city of Hereford ‘pothole capital of the UK’.

The Conservative MP posted on his website: “I call on Herefordshire Council to decide if Balfour Beatty are capable of overseeing the spending of £106,918,000 on road resurfacing.”

He said the council should “think carefully” about partnering with Balfour Beatty Living Places (BBLP), with which it has a long-term contract to maintain the county’s public realm.

“We need innovative and quality solutions to repairing our roads and I would like your views on whether Balfour Beatty are able to deliver this,” he wrote.

Herefordshire Council said that while it has previously allocated roads funding exclusively to BBLP, “this year will also see the introduction of our new Herefordshire Highways Framework, which allows the council to use alternative contractors where appropriate to deliver additional work”.

“BBLP will still remain responsible for the delivery of public realm services and road maintenance work as agreed in the annual plan,” the council said.

The Conservative-run council intends to spend over £38 million on road improvements in the county in the current financial year.

Its cabinet member for roads Coun Barry Durkin said: “The condition of our roads is one of the issues that residents are most concerned about and that is why we are determined to improve the situation.”

Meanwhile, the Herefordshire A-road with the most delays has been named.

Figures from the Department of Transport show that the A438, which runs from Bronllys in Powys across the width of Herefordshire to Tewkesbury via Hereford and Ledbury, has recorded the highest average vehicle delays for each of the last five years.

It showed an average delay of 29.7 seconds per mile in the 2019-2023 period, with 28.6 seconds last year.

Second in the table was the A465, which runs from the south of Hereford to Pontrilas, and showed an average delay of 25.7 seconds per mile.