ONE suspects county council finance chief Nick Dawe may have had his tongue firmly lodged in his cheeks when he told Cabinet of his plans to save money on highways maintenance.

Suggesting “there is a potential for communities such as parish councils to undertake some maintenance related work” he felt early dialogue with them was important.

District councils could help, too, he said and a recent example “has been the co-operation between the county council and Cambridge City Council and other authorities on gritting footways.”

Your diarist can only assume he missed or chose to overlook the pre-Christmas statement from the Tory highways chief, Councillor Mac McGuire, who wrote to all parish councils to tell them they would getting no more salt to conserve stocks.

Lib Dems were also less than enamoured with the county’s gritting plans and I recall county councillor Fiona Whelan noting that “parts of my community were completely snowed in, and because their pavements and residential streets were frozen over, they had no access to wider community”.