Local highways authorities had to fill in more than 5,000 potholes each in 2005/06, underlining the need for increased investment to allow the backlog of repairs to be tackled across councils’ networks.
The Asphalt Industry Alliance’s latest ALARM survey of highways engineers, which attracted more responses than ever, with 65% of authorities participating, suggests that £56M of maintenance budgets across England and Wales was spent filling potholes.
English highway authorities outside London had identified 5,123 potholes – 14 for every day of the year – while boroughs had an even bigger problem with the potentially-dangerous defect, reporting 7,807 on average. The proportion of highways budgets that was spent on reactive work in London and the shires stands at 31% and 24%, the same reported last year. The Asphalt Industry Alliance claimed that, while these figures stood at 36% and 32% five years ago, ‘the proportion is still some considerable way off the desired level’.
Reactive work costs as much as ten times more than a planned maintenance programme, rarely tackles the underlying cause of damage and fails to prolong the life of the road, it stressed. Alliance chairman Jim Crick commented: ‘The number of potholes is an indicator of the general poor condition of the local road network. This level of patch and mend is an inefficient use of resources.’ Senior county officials said the figures, while anecdotal, were based on returns from two-thirds of highways authorities, so provided a strong indication that funding was insufficient for regular planned resurfacing on all classes of roads. Richard Wills, vice-president of the County Surveyors’ Society, at Lincolnshire, said: ‘The unclassified network certainly isn’t getting the level of planned maintenance it needs, which inevitably will lead to more call-outs to fill potholes.’
The findings were released a week after Surveyor launched a campaign calling on the Department for Transport to restate its commitment to tackling the national repairs backlog, and for the Treasury to provide a real-terms revenue funding increase in this autumn’s spending review (Surveyor, 22 March). Engineers stressed that increasing planned maintenance and reducing routine repairs was vital, and required a real-terms increase in revenue, as well as capital funding.
Matthew Lugg, County Surveyors’ Society engineering chair, said: ‘We need to get away from fire-fighting, and to do that, we need sufficient revenue and capital funding.’ Often, authorities used left-over revenue from repairing highways defects on planned resurfacing priorities.
The annual local authority road maintenance survey. : www.alarm-survey.co.uk
Register now for full access
Register just once to get unrestricted, real-time coverage of the issues and challenges facing UK transport and highways engineers.
Full website content includes the latest news, exclusive commentary from leading industry figures and detailed topical analysis of the highways, transportation, environment and place-shaping sectors.
Use the link below to register your details for full, free access.
Already a registered? Login
