Telford and Wrekin Council says it is confident in the condition of its roads
Telford and Wrekin Council says it is confident in the condition of its roads, after a national survey showed that one in five local roads in the Midlands now has less than five year’s structural life remaining.
This year's Local Authority Road Maintenance survey from the Asphalt Industry Alliance, said the backlog of carriageway repairs had escalated to more than £1.5 billion, compounded by increased costs caused by rising inflation.
It said that highway engineers were having to make difficult choices about keeping local roads open and safe versus improving overall conditions.
However Telford and Wrekin Council pointed at that it has been ranked one of the top areas in the country – and first in the West Midlands – for overall customer satisfaction with highway and transport services, according to a survey by the by the National Highways and Transport Network earlier this year.
Councillor Lee Carter, cabinet member for neighbourhood services, regeneration and the high street said: “We are confident in the condition of our roads. The council has been working through an ambitious four-year investment programme to protect, care and invest to create a better borough and between 2020 and 2024 we will be ploughing more than £50m to keep neighbourhoods safe, clean and well connected.
“We can already seeing this paying off and were delighted to ranked one of the top areas, despite a record 21 per cent cut to funding received from Government to maintain local roads.”
He said that further evidence from the pot hole repair team also showed this following a specific social media pot hole campaign that called upon people to report visible pot holes for repair in which there was 44 per cent decrease in potholes against the same period the previous year.
Rick Green, AIA Chair, said: “Local authority highway teams have a legal responsibility to keep our roads safe, but do not have the funds to do so in a cost effective, proactive way. As a result, while they report some slight improvements in surface conditions, the overall structure of our roads continues to decline and 22 per cent in the Midlands could need to be rebuilt in the next five years.
“Recent government announcements regarding three-year spending on maintenance for England are a step in the right direction but don’t go far enough. To ensure we have a safe, resilient, sustainable network on which we can all rely, a longer-term approach and significant investment is still needed."
