DfT faces deluge of claims to repair flood hit roads

15 August 2007

The Department for Transport is expecting a deluge of claims for capital funding to repair local road networks devastated by the summer flooding.

Having initially only made £3M available for emergency maintenance in June, the DfT has now promised to consider ‘all reasonable claims’ to ‘address serious, unforeseeable requirements’.

England experienced the three wettest months to the end of July on record, with flood waters undermining the structure of roads, damaging bridges, and creating landslides.

Thirty-nine highway authorities – over one-quarter of the total – from North Dorset to Northumberland were affected by the flooding of June or July, and are likely to make bids for financial assistance to rebuild local roads and make other repairs to structures, streetlights and footways.

The cost of urgent repairs in Gloucestershire alone is estimated by highway engineers to be £25M, £15M on carriageways, equivalent to its annual capital maintenance programme. Its claim, and those for just two other badly-hit authorities, is equivalent to almost one-tenth of this year’s £683M capital budget for local road repairs. Sheffield – devastated in June – has a £20M repair bill for its roads, and Barnsley needs at least £6M, including for 2.5km of roads.

Gloucestershire had to ‘completely rewrite’ its capital programme, said Duncan Jordan, the county’s environment director. It was imperative that works to make routes safe were undertaken before temperatures dropped. Part of the A46, a key north-south route in the county, was closed last week after sections of an escarpment adjacent to the road severely damaged by the flash-floods moved by up to 14mm.

The DfT, which has appointed Atkins to process claims, wants applicants to include evidence for cost estimates; an options appraisal, including consideration of value-for-money of different options; and details of planned work programmes, with a risk-mitigation strategy.

The department also stressed that ‘funding for emergencies can only be found by reducing transport capital resources elsewhere’, alarming Matthew Lugg, the County Surveyors’ Society engineering committee chair.

‘England's road repair backlog is larger, but the answer to addressing new, pressing maintenance needs is not to top-slice the national roads budget, nor to reduce the funding for authorities that weren’t affected,’ he said.

Ministers continued to inspect flood damage for themselves, with Baroness Andrews, communities minister, being shown the landslip damage to Sheffield’s Middlewood Road and the collapsed Livesey Street Bridge.

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DfT faces deluge of claims to repair flood hit roads

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