Council in £3m drive to improve upkeep of roads

The £16.5m underspend is being funnelled into a number of areas, including £3.3m funding on its road network, as well as beefing up its reserves.

Two severe winters have taken their toll on the East Riding Council’s roads network covering more than 2,00 miles and council leader Steve Parnaby says the recent heavy rain will also have had an impact.

Coun Parnaby said: “Clearly we had two really, really hard winters. We did get some funding for that. We now have this torrential weather which doesn’t help because it gets into the cracks, so there is going to be more and more pressure on the highways.”

He added: “Prioritising highways maintenance is not new and we have already put in considerable additional funds over and above normal budgets to carry out essential repair work: an extra £500,000 was allocated in the 2011-12 budget and previously the council found £1.4m from contingency funds to respond to the impact on the roads of the terrible weather we had at the end of 2010. We also secured £2.4m from a special central government funding pot for road repairs.”

The council is about to do some work on two main routes in Goole, but councillors there said some residential streets in the town needed urgent attention.

Labour councillor Keith Moore said: “Terraced housing streets have been totally neglected, with great big potholes going on for two or three inches deep.”

At a meeting next Tuesday, the council’s cabinet will also be asked to approve spending £5m of the underspend to support a £253m capital programme for housing, schools and roads. Work has already started on a £10m road scheme, with the council contributing £2.3m, to improve the A164 between the Humber Bridge and Beverley.

More than a third of the money – £6.3m – is earmarked to beef up reserves ahead of further cuts, with the council particularly concerned about increasing pressure on the adult services budget from the rising number of elderly people.

The council currently spends £10m on planned maintenance and more than £1.7m on repairs, including potholes.

Paul Watters, the AA’s head of roads policy said the money would be “well spent” getting roads into order before the onset of winter: “Most councils are going to be spending less, budgets have been slashed. Rural roads are more vulnerable because than most because there are a lot of them and they don’t have much traffic in comparison to A-roads and motorways.

“It will be money well spent because it makes roads more resilient for the winter, if they do proper carriageway refurbishment as opposed to patching potholes.”

He added: “Floodwater can certainly undermine the sub surface of the road, it is like anything in excess, too much heat, too much cold, is going to test the structure of the road. We know many rural roads have foundations which some highways authorities don’t know what they consist of, because they don’t get rebuilt for 100 years and they don’t have records of what’s underneath.”

East Riding Council says despite Government cutbacks, it has been able to avoid major job losses and protect services through planning ahead. Last year the council axed 45 jobs – against predictions of 140. Over the next two years it is estimated 170 could go – but the final figure is expected to be significantly less, through redeployment.