Highways: £10M ‘reward’ for Gloucestershire

27 September 2007

Gloucestershire County Council has been awarded an interim payment of £10M from the Department for Transport to repair flood-damaged highways, because it had ‘stayed ahead of the game’.

Duncan Jordan, Gloucestershire’s director of environment, said the council had received the initial payment after doing ‘so much hard work’ on its damage estimates.

‘The DfT could justify the cost on the basis of these estimates,’ he told Surveyor. ‘It is a sum we can work with, and will encourage us to make further progress on our damage estimates.’

The council estimates the costs will come to £25M in total.

Thirty-nine highway authorities – more than one-quarter of the total – from North Dorset to Northumberland were affected by the flooding of June or July, and are now likely to bid for funds for emergency repairs – even though many were flooded weeks before Gloucestershire.

Barnsley Council said it would be meeting the DfT again, in early October, with highways representatives from Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster, to raise the issue of early payments, due to the scale of the problems in South Yorkshire.

The Department for Transport told Surveyor it asked all affected authorities to submit initial damage estimates this month. But Gloucestershire was ‘the only authority which asked for confirmation that we would provide an initial amount’.

Authorities have been advised against delaying ‘urgent remedial work, as the costs can be included later in a claim for the full capital cost’.

Some authorities intending to bid have yet to produce an initial estimate of the cost. Oxfordshire, for example, which suffered in July, is still producing this.
Full claims will be expected by the DfT later, once there is supporting evidence showing additional expenditure incurred.

Gloucestershire said it expected further funding with the next LTP settlement, once the DfT had looked in more detail at the work required.

However, Jordan expressed concern about the possibility of further damage this winter. ‘Our water tables are already at winter levels, while cold weather could cause all sorts of problems, such as roads blowing up,’ he said.

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Highways: £10M ‘reward’ for Gloucestershire

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