St Albans residents’ anger at paving slab replacement

ST ALBANS: Paving slabs being torn up by Herts County Council and replaced with tarmac are being smashed up despite being perfectly useable, say angry residents in a district street.

One resident has estimated that during the Herts Highways recent work to pavements along Beechwood Avenue, they removed 150 slabs between two semi-detached houses and only three of them were cracked.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous but says he also speaks on behalf of others living close by, said: “It’s wasteful but they are taking slabs that could be reused and smashing them up. What a shameful waste of money.

“It’s incredible but just last weekend I saw a council worker around the back of Boots taking up one slab that was cracked in four places and putting this cracked slab back into the ground.

“When I asked him why he wasn’t replacing it with a new one, he said there weren’t any available.

“None of this work would need doing if they maintained the pavements in the first place.

“A little bit of work over time would prevent costly work like this.”

Another concerned resident said she would be keen to take some of the slabs off the council’s hands, if they were just going to waste.

She said: “I have a spot near my outbuilding which would be perfect for those slabs.

“It seems a waste to smash them and dump them elsewhere when there’s nothing wrong with them. We could recycle them at no cost to the council.”

A spokesperson for Herts County Council said the paving slabs were old imperial slabs which were too heavy to be lifted and stored.

He said it was more costly for the council to transport and store them as they were and assured residents that the broken slabs were recycled for other uses.