Meeting documents

Mr Tett introduced the report and highlighted the following points:

• The County Council recognised that the current state of the roads was not of an acceptable standard.
• The adverse weather conditions recently experienced had had a huge impact on the state of the roads and the ability to carry out repairs.
• Mr Tett highlighted that over the last seven years £120m capital funding had been spent on resurfacing roads and that those resurfaced roads stood up better to bad weather.
• Mr Tett confirmed that a revenue fund had been assembled.  This would normally be £2m but had also been supplemented by £1m additional funding from government as a result of lobbying, releasing £1.2m from the Council’s reserves and £0.5m devolved funding to Members that Mr Tett strongly urged Members to target on local repairs within their divisions.  By prioritising funding in Transport an additional £0.3m had been released, which brought the total fund to £5m.
• The £5m would be revenue funding which allowed it to be released quickly so that works could start straight away.
• This funding was in addition to the £15m agreed in February for resurfacing.
• Mr Tett stated that while this additional funding was welcomed, it would still not be enough to reach the expectations of residents.

Mr Tett proposed the motion which was seconded by Mr M Shaw.

Members raised the following comments and questions:

A Member commented that any extra funding as part of the HS2 programme would be important and that although Members had a budget for their local area this was still a limited amount which made prioritising works difficult.  Mention was also made of the importance of the County’s footpaths being up to standard. 

A Member commended the team for doing a fantastic job over the winter months with the resources available to them.  Members were urged to formally go back to Central Government for more funding overall.

A Member highlighted the need for the works to be carried out in a more systematic way and for the works to be supervised in order to ensure that the money was being used in the most efficient way.

A Member raised the issue that while repairs had been carried out, some were less than satisfactory and there was a need for these to be supervised.

Mr Tett responded to Members comments as summarised below:

• Mr Tett urged Members to advise residents to report any potholes - the Council can’t take action unless reported.
• The debate with HS2 was ongoing.
• HGVs caused the most damage to the County’s roads.
• Even though £5m was a substantial amount it still wasn’t enough and that more money was required from capital to spend on resurfacing.
• The programme of works would ensure joined up working so that the money was spent effectively.

The report set out the following recommendation:

Recommendation

It is recommended that £1.234m of funds from the General Fund is combined with the existing service budgets, member devolved budgets, DfT funding, to create a £5m programme of high quality of highway repairs.

Council is asked to:

1. Agree that £1.234m of County Council reserves are used to supplement existing funding to provide for predominately plane and patch type repairs.

2. Agree that all County Councillors are encouraged to use the £0.480m devolved member budget to focus additional resource to the carriageway repair budget.

RESOLVED:  Council AGREED the recommendations as set out above.