Action needed to ‘arrest deteriorating’ urban network

27 September 2007

Worcestershire County Council has unveiled a £15M asset management plan to ‘arrest the deterioration’ of its unclassified urban roads.

A report to cabinet by John Hobbs, the council’s director of environmental services, calls for a massive increase of funding on the unclassified urban highway network, to support ‘urgent’ resurfacing and repair work.

The county currently spends an average £700,000 a year on maintenance of these roads, so the costs of the proposed work would be met by either an increase in the highway maintenance budget or a ‘reassessment of priorities with less attention being given to other work’.

The majority of investment in highway structural repairs, of around £8M a year, is by way of local transport plan funding.

The work would follow an asset management approach, in which the roads are categorised into green (good condition), amber (defective but recoverable), and red (defective and unrecoverable).

Resources would be focused on converting the amber condition to green, keeping the greens green, and only undertaking palliative work to the reds – or ‘not throwing good money after bad’.

Without the work, it is likely that the Best Value Performance Indicator will threaten the council’s Comprehensive Performance Assessment rating, the report states.

The council’s real-time database shows ‘a substantial portion’ of the county’s unclassified roads ‘have reached the point at which their condition will deteriorate disproportionately quickly, unless urgent, remedial action is taken’.

Hobbs believes urban unclassified roads have a major impact on public perception, thereby justifying the investment. In addition, their good state of repair would deliver a local priority, ‘with an improved BVPI score almost by default’.

The cabinet will consider the plans on Friday 28 September.

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Action needed to ‘arrest deteriorating’ urban network

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