The ~Welsh Assembly Government~ has held out the prospect of providing additional funding for highway maintenance – pending the outcome of Wales-wide SCANNER surveys, due this summer.
The Welsh ~Local Government Association~ claims £20M-a-year extra is needed for county road repairs – and councils are even willing to allow it to be ring-fenced. Welsh transport and economic development minister ~Andrew Davies~ told the assembly last week the WLGA had made ‘a strong case’ that the roads repair backlog was growing. But he wanted ‘agreed objective evidence for the state of local roads before any decision on funding can be made’ – and ‘the scale of improvement’ if additional funds were needed.
County councils are using SCANNER technology – funded by the assembly – enabling them to record the surface condition of roads at traffic speed as the core of the operation. Surveys were launched in October and results are due this summer. Statistics for 2004 suggested that 16% of the A county road network needed to be considered for structural repair.
The ~Institution of Civil Engineers~ recently claimed Welsh county roads were suffering from a £1bn maintenance backlog. The issue has rocketed up the political agenda. Labour assembly members – who usually avoid criticising their own administration – joined a chorus of complaints about the state of local roads last week.
Deputy minister, ~John Griffiths~ complained about the ‘backlog of repair’ in Newport (Gwent). Other assembly members claimed there was no need for further research, given the state of local roads. ~John Owen~ the chair of County Surveyors’ Society Wales, agreed that while the SCANNER surveys were useful, it was obvious that extra funding was needed. ‘If you have water coming through your roof, you don’t need to carry out a full survey before you do anything about it. The question of whether the backlog is £200M or £400M is academic. We have problems we need to start addressing now,’ he said.
His authority, Powys County Council, requires £30-50M for work that ‘absolutely needs to be done’ as soon as possible – repairing roads that reached the end of their residual life five years ago, or removing 7.5t weight or 30ft height restrictions. But the assembly was ‘moving in the right direction’, and recognised the need for backlog targets.
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