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Council on potholes target

Posted onPosted on 7th Jan

Nottinghamshire County Council is on course to have filled the equivalent of more than 152,000 pot holes across the county by the end of March.

A report to this week’s Transport and Highways committee (Thurs Jan 8) says that between April last year and the end of December, the Council repaired nearly 60,000 individual pot holes.

This compares with nearly 34,000 for the financial year 20013/14.

In addition, the Council launched a programme of patching works – a more substantial way of dealing with roads where the concentration and number of potholes makes it uneconomical to fill them on an individual basis.

By the end of the financial year this patching programme will have repaired nearly 31,000sq metres of the county’s roads – the equivalent of over 92,000 potholes.

As the 11th largest county in the UK, the Council looks after a network of around 2,600 miles of road and spends more than £2.8m a year on carriageway repairs such as patching and filling in potholes.

Last year the Council launched its new three-pronged approach to potholes and patching and that – combined with extra funding of £2.78m from the Government in recognition of that new approach – has enabled it to increase dramatically the number of pot holes it fixes.

The Council’s new approach to repairs — incorporating many of the principles and guidance from the national pothole review published by the Department for Transport – has three basic principles:

to repair potholes “right first time” on time and quickly, with the use of “find and fix” teams

to repair nearby potholes at the same time

to batch together patching works into small areas using new methods.

“Our improved methods are dramatically reducing the time taken to repair most potholes and create a much more responsive service for residents,” says Coun Kevin Greaves, chairman of the transport and highways committee.

“We are on course to have spent all of the money given to us by government by the end of March, which is the end of the current financial year.

“The extra funding has meant we were able to repair more than 60,000 potholes before the end of the December, compared to 34,000 for the previous financial year, and we will be carrying out more pre-patching work and small drainage schemes across the county over the next three months.

“In addition to the money, our new approach to filling potholes and our “find and fix” gangs, means that we are filling more of the most urgent potholes – usually within one working day of them being found or reported.

“There are still locations where it is more appropriate to use conventional repair methods but, overall, the two new methods mean many more potholes are being repaired in a cost-effective way.”