County road repairs drive aims to tackle £400m works backlog

MILLIONS of pounds of road repairs are set to take place across North Yorkshire in the coming months as council chiefs battle to reduce a £400m repairs backlog ahead of the onset of what is feared could be another brutal winter.

The Yorkshire Post has learned that talks took place between council bosses and transport chiefs last week to hammer out a £2.8m road repair programme for the Harrogate district between October and February.

The plan calls for £2m to be spent on 14 major roads across Harrogate and Knaresborough town centres alone.

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Meanwhile a further £1.5m plan to repair damaged roads across Scarborough is set to be announced shortly as part of a £2.8m package for the district.

The money is part of an £11.5m funding package for its road repair programme announced by North Yorkshire County Council earlier this year.

Nearly £7m was granted by the Department of Transport after it announced it was doubling its pothole repair fund for local authorities across England to £200m earlier this year.

The Cabinet member for planning, transport and economic development at Harrogate Council, Richard Cooper, said: “I do genuinely think this a real investment in the road network across Harrogate.

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“We have suffered two very severe winters and this has resulted in a lot of damage.

“We are very pleased that the county council has decided to pass this on to Harrogate.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done.”

A recent report from Labour’s Shadow Roads Minister, John Woodcock, surveyed 111 local authorities across England, representing around three quarters of councils with a responsibility for road maintenance.

The report highlighted North Yorkshire County Council as one of the five worse, with estimated backlogs topping £400m to achieve a gold-plated standard of roads.

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Mr Woodcock said that matters were only likely to worsen as councils cut their budgets and undertook to make repairs to only the most severe and hazardous issues.

North Yorkshire County Council’s assistant director for highways, Barrie Mason, said due to the arctic winters over the past few years combined with swingeing public sector cuts, the local authority was having to prioritise and divert funds from elsewhere to maintain the network as best it could.

New cycle routes and footpaths have all been scrapped to help contribute to the repairs backlog.

Mr Mason said: “We have already done some of the repairs needed this year and we are in the thick of it really.

“But we have got significant works to do.

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“It has taken a while because we have had to go through the process of getting contractors and making sure we get the best price.

“We are trying to time the works as best we can – for Scarborough we didn’t want to do it during the tourist season.

“This is something that we have moved forward with as quickly as possible.”

Council chiefs are braced for more severe weather this winter sending the repairs backlog spiralling out of control.

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But Mr Mason assured residents they are ready despite the financial constraints.

“We are still well prepared for the winter,” he said.

“We have made efforts to ensure we put as much money as we can into highway maintenance.

“It is an ongoing battle to keep the network in the best condition we can.”

The 2009-10 winter caused more than £30m of accelerated damage in North Yorkshire which covers more than 5,500 miles of highways, the largest road network in England.

On December 2 last year at Topcliffe, near Thirsk, a temperature of minus 19C was recorded – the coldest ever in Yorkshire.