The Conservative and Green candidates in North Herefordshire have clashed over spending in the county and the Greens’ track record in local government.

Asked at a hustings in Ledbury Community Hall how they would respond to local authority funding being “cut to the bone”, Green candidate and group leader in the county Ellie Chowns said it was “shocking how local government funding has been slashed under the Conservatives over the last 14 years, which our MP has voted for year on year”.

“We need an MP who will say to central government, if you want services you have to be prepared to fund them,” she said.

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Conservative candidate Sir Bill Wiggin responded: “The person you have just been listening to was a cabinet member in the council which did the damage to your roads.”

He said: “If you don’t repair the roads you can’t turn round and blame the government. I have had to go back to London to get the money, £207 million, to put the roads right.”

Ellie Chowns (Green) and Sir Bill Wiggin (Conservative) addressing the Ledbury hustings(Image: Moonrise Media / YouTube)

He said part of the county’s problem was its high number of children in care, which “is desperately expensive and a very good example of local authority waste, not to mention the agonies those families have been through”.

And he also attacked the county’s previous Independents for Herefordshire / Green administration for “frittering” money on the Maylord Orchards shopping centre, city planters and “putting moss on bus stop roofs”.

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Dr Chowns said she was “not comfortable with the politics of attack”, but claimed it was “simply not true that the previous administration didn’t fix the roads, we spent £17 million a year, effectively as it had been previously”.

“Poor practice in Herefordshire Council’s children’s social care dates back to at least 2011, so to eight years of the previous Conservative administration,” she said. “This should not be a political football.”

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She added that Maylord “has been a really good investment”, while money for planters “was raised by the previous Conservative administration and could only be used on prettifying the city”.

Labour’s Jon Browning said “It’s as important to have the public engaged with councils and local government, and if I am elected I will work to enable the public to do that more effectively, and to hold myself to account.”

Liberal Democrat candidate Cat Hornsey said: “We are very underfunded compared to other areas. We need much more coming in.”

The Reform UK candidate was unable to attend.