Cheshire East Council has voted to increase its spending on roads maintenance by £19m over the next three years as part of its 'invest to save' strategy, which will be funded by borrowing,
The aim is to help tackle the borough's crumbling 2,700km network and reduce the number of potholes that need repair.
In addition to local funding, each local highways' authority receives annual roads maintenance and repair funding from central government which comes from national taxation, including fuel duty.
However, government funding for Cheshire East highways was cut by 21 per cent last year and is now being frozen at £13m a year for the next three years.
The council has voted to invest an additional £19m in highways repairs, funded by borrowing, over the next three years – spending £7m in 2022/3, £6m in 2023/4 and £6m in 2024/5.
This means a total highways maintenance spending of £20m next year. However, assessment by the council's strategic highways team shows that £27m is needed to be invested each year just to keep the roads in their current state.
The council predicts the additional £19m spent on highways maintenance will reduce the number of potholes that need fixing by almost 8,000 – saving the council around £575,000 from its reactive repairs bill over the next four years.
Councillor Craig Browne, deputy leader of Cheshire East Council and chair of its highways and transport committee, said: "Underinvestment in the public highways, due to funding cuts by central government coupled with the impact of climate change, is resulting in a significant increase in defects that require reactive repairs to keep our highways safe.
"By targeting additional highways investment of £19m, we will save money on the need for reactive repair of potholes further down the line. This 'invest to save' approach will reduce our repairs bill by more than half a million pounds over the next three years."
In January, Cheshire East Council joined local authorities across the country in calling on the government to 'fix our funding so we can fix our roads'.
The campaign, which is apolitical, was launched by the leader of Conservative-controlled Lincolnshire County Council in recognition that many local authorities across the country have seen their funding for highways maintenance and repairs slashed.
The leader and deputy leader of Cheshire East Council joined forces with other local authorities to lobby government and demand reverses to cuts to highways funding – so the borough and nation's decaying roads network can be restored.
Cllr Browne said: "Rural boroughs are significantly disadvantaged by the government's existing funding formula. We need fairer highways funding for the residents and road users of Cheshire East – they demand and deserve this and we cannot continue to be overlooked.
"Without adequate funding, people will see our roads only get worse and the local economy suffer."
The council's highways service is responsible for repairs and management of the borough's 2,700km of roads and 2,103km of footways, in addition to the maintenance of bridges, street lighting, signage and 600km of cycleways. It is the biggest council asset – valued at about £6bn.
On average, the council receives nearly 2,950 highways fault reports a month. In the year to January 2022, the council received a total of 35,352 reports and filled 21,306 potholes across the borough, with a forecast of a further 6,900 pothole repairs likely by the end of March 2022. The average cost of repairing a pothole is £72.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
Don't think we will have cars then !
If one enquires how these contractors charge for work done, ist by units done or length of road, but as we have been told, these are never shown to us, the tax payers, and in my opinion, having judged what was done before lunch, and seeing working time finishing to return to base, where and to whom has the money gone to ?
Peter Davenport
Therefore, some of this extra money will recruit new council staff to inspect their work and give us an independent assessment of its quality. It means that any shoddy repairs will now be spotted and will not be paid for.
Additionally, this extra money also means we can do less patch filling repairs. These are cheap to do but as they soon disintegrate, need doing regularly. Instead we now have the funds to do more resurfacing repairs that are initially far more expensive but as they last longer are cheaper in the long run.
Cllr Mark Goldsmith
Residents of Wilmslow
Wilmslow West & Chorley
"Our aim is to deliver the highest possible standard of service throughout Cheshire East whilst improving the network condition and deliver value for money for our residents and businesses. We take pride in our work and service putting Customer Satisfaction at the heart of what we do.
We were the first Highways Service Provider to achieve ISO 55001 for our effective and efficient approach to asset management. We are also certified to ISO 44001 for Collaborative Business Relationships and our successes have been recognised by the industry through us winning both national and regional awards for innovation."
And it's not even the 1st April !
Please reassure us that the awarding of the 15 year contract was underpinned with some measurable KPI's and that any clear and consistent failures could result in the early termination of the contract.
https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/second-customer-for-potholepro
Also, they could do with repairing the road between Alderley Edge and the Old Astra Zeneca site, which is rapidly becoming some sort of glorified farm track.
Peter Davenporrt
The above I specifically mention as they are dangerous to Cyclists, Motorcycles in particular beside traffic in general.
Failure to maintain the road surface does appear to slow the traffic, so maybe this is part of a cunning plan by CEC as a traffic calming measure..