HEREFORDSHIRE Council has set out the goals it aims to accomplish in the financial year.

The authority states that it will complete a study into the viability of a new Golden Valley Parkway railway station at Pontrilas; spend £1.1 million on infrastructure improvements for buses and hold a ‘bus services summit’; publish strategic plans for the the eastern expansion of Ross-on-Wye and begin construction of Ross Enterprise Park.

The council has separately pledged to spend a million pounds to improve flood risk management; finish building the second wetland, at Tarrington.

It will also begin building upgrades to Peterchurch Primary School and spend half a million pounds improving children’s play areas across the county.

The delivery plan is expected to be approved by the council’s ruling cabinet this Thursday, March 27.

Meanwhile the number of potholes fixed last year in Herefordshire has been revealed – and the figure is down on the year before.

Herefordshire Council was asked in a Freedom of Information request how many potholes in the county’s roads it had fixed in each of the past five years.

The figure for 2024 was 27,198 repaired, down slightly on the 31,404 in 2023, though comparable with previous years.

The cost of this work has decreased from over £2 million at the start of the decade, to just under £1.6 million in financial year 2023/24.

The figure for the current financial year up to mid-February stood at just over £1.2 million.

Herefordshire Council said earlier this year that in 2024 its contractors fixed 99 per cent of identified road defects within its target time.

The council is meanwhile adopting a strategic as well as reactive approach to repairing the county’s roads. This month the authority also announced that a £2.4-million package to resurface ten A and B roads in the county.