The chancellor’s recently pledged more money for road repairs in his Budget – now we know what our share of this £420m will be as an authority.
Last year’s harsh winter took its toll on our roads with our highways team repairing 95,000 potholes between January and August - nearly twice as many over the same time period as the previous year.
So this additional £6.6m will mean we can undertake further works to put right this damage and consider new plant and machinery for tackling the problem.
We’ve already approved £27.6m to invest our transport infrastructure which involves repairing more than 200 roads over the next financial year, taking forward our budget plans and demonstrating our commitment to improving our 2,600 miles of road network.
Some of the schemes scheduled in include:
• Surface dressing on the B6139 Coxmoor Road in Kirkby following highly successful structural patching works carried out by Via Operations - this road was deemed prohibitively expensive to resurface due to its condition and length, but has been rescued to the point it can now be prepared, surface dressed and saved from further deterioration
• Resurfacing works on the A638 London Road, Retford; the C213 Papplewick Lane (the section from the Ashfield Boundary to Moor Road) and on the A6191 Chesterfield Road South, Mansfield
• Surface dressing on the A6191 Rock Hill, Mansfield to prevent its further deterioration, avoiding very expensive resurfacing repairs in the future
• Works on Westbrook Drive, Rainworth continuing the work targeting those roads which form the ‘spine’ of housing estates
• Structural patching on the B6030 Mansfield Road, Clipstone to effectively ‘join-up’ with the previous resurfacing works carried out in both Newark (Kings Clipstone) and Mansfield (west of the district boundary at Seventh Avenue).
We strive to provide the best possible value for money with our road repairs and resurfacing by making the ‘right repair at the right time’ to avoid larger repair bills in years to come, cut congestion and make our roads safer.
And during the next 12 months, we will be spending around £4.25m of the four-year cash pot we set up this year to invest in our roads.
We are well aware that potholes are a major problem for all road users and an understandably emotive subject, but this extra cash, and our plans already in train, will go some way towards improving our roads seeing benefits for drivers and cyclists alike
Councillor John Cottee, Chairman of Nottinghamshire County Council's Communities and Place Committee