One-off £5M cash injection to transform borough’s streets

20 September 2007

The London Borough of Islington’s capital maintenance programme has swelled by 200% with a one-off, £5M injection of cash from its own resources.

The investment increase, paid for by the sale of the council’s commercial property portfolio, came after Islington ‘lost Transport for London’s funding lottery,’ securing £2.5M, according to Martin Holland, head of highways.

The programme is designed not only to address a £100M backlog of repairs, but to address residents’ concerns over street condition.

‘This isn’t primarily engineering-led,’ Holland told Surveyor. ‘It is to make a real improvement to the appearance of our streets, and thereby, address crime and anti-social behaviour, and assist regeneration.’

The money will be spent not only on resurfacing carriageways and footways, but also renewing street furniture, introducing new trees, and improving drainage. ‘We don’t want to spread the jam thinly by focusing only on improving our road condition indicators,’ said Holland.

‘We’re here to improve life for our residents, not to please the Audit Commission’.

The cash hike means that 90 streets instead of 20 can be treated during 2007/08, under Islington’s approach of ‘fence-to-fence’ street improvements. These will be selected from the list of roads and footways with more than 50% of the surface deteriorated, which would cost an estimated £40M to repair.

Routes serving key services such as hospitals or those which would aid regeneration or crime reduction will be priorities. An upgrade of the estate road of Fred White Walk, synonymous with drug-selling and prostitution, with an improved streetscene, and new streetlights last year, cut crime incidents by 60%. Holland defended using the budget to buy items such as trees that were likely to increase the future maintenance liability. ‘These are streets, not just a highways asset.’ Trees and footways could co-exist by, for instance, using bonded gravel aggregate, which seals the roots but allows trees to breathe.

Cllr Lucy Watt, Islington’s Liberal Democrat executive member for environment, announcing the new programme, said residents ‘deserve the best – greener, cleaner, safer streets’. Meeting residents’ demands would ‘also improve our condition indicators, and reduce our backlog,’ said Holland.

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One-off £5M cash injection to transform borough’s streets

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