County Council herds cash to repair pothole ‘farms’
A £2.78 million programme to repair the county’s worst pothole ‘farms’ is to be launched by Buckinghamshire County Council.
The County Council has received £1.78m in Department for Transport repair grants, however,more money is set to be addedfrom its reserves and from Councillors’ repair funds, for a ‘plane and patch’ scheme to resurface stretches of road with multiple defects.
Plane and patch teams will target the worst-hit roads across the county, using local knowledge from Transport for Buckinghamshire (TfB) local area technicians, with capacity to repair up to nine miles of road.
While this programme is active, Transport for Buckinghamshire repair teams will continue with the County’s £2m programme repairing individual potholes, and make more use of their high-velocity Jet Patcher, which speeds repair rates.
Mark Shaw, Deputy Leader andCabinet Member for Transportation, said road defects had worsened in the first three months of the year as a consequence of the harsh winter weather, with three severe snow storms, and damaging freeze-thaw effects coupled with corrosive road salt action.
“This is a national problem that doesn’t just affect Buckinghamshire,” said Mark. “It’s good to see the Government has recognised this with the allocation of around £100m in extra funding for councils. While this is very welcome help, it won’t solve our under-funded roads maintenance problem, and we’d like to see the Government providing a more sustainable solution for our roads.”
Repairs in the cold and wet aftermath of winter weather risked being short-lived, he said, which often meant having to do a repair twice.
“I do appreciate some road surfaces have taken longer to fix than we’d have liked,” said Mark. “But doing repairs twice doesn’t make economic sense, and I know our residents would expect us to steward finances more responsibly.
“Our plane and patch programme will be a sound investment in our roads and will provide long-lasting surfaces – not just temporary repairs.”
The additional programme spend will need the agreement of the full council on April 26.