More than £2.25m worth of flood damage caused to the county's roads

10:54am Thursday 7th February 2013 in News Photograph of the Author By Paul Rogers

AROUND 258 miles of the county's roads need long-term permanent work to prevent further deterioration, Herefordshire Council has warned.

The council says that more than £2.25million worth of flood damage has been caused to the roads and have applied for government funding to support it.

It adds that it has already spent more than £1.4million on flood damage repairs in the past three months alone and plans to fast-track urgent repairs to some of the county's most severely damaged roads.

Of the 258 miles that need long-term permanent work, 21 are on A-roads.

The government has committed to provide an additional £2.4million over the next two years for Herefordshire's road maintenance programme, with Herefordshire Council planning to bring forward £1.5million of the funding.

The programme of maintenance works for the coming year is based on sureys of road conditions with investment targeted at the roads that present the greatest risk.

Details of the programme are due to be announced next month and motorists will be kept informed of where the works will be taking place.

"We are aware that this is a major concern to local peopel and we are investigating ways to address this," said Councillor Graham Powell, cabinet member for infrastructure and education.

"If we had the cash to carry out the maintenance work needed, the cycle of repairing defects and potholes could be broken.

"This will require a multi-million pound investment and we simply don't have enough money available now to carry out all the work required.

"But, if we carry out permanent, long-term work at locations presenting the greatest risk to our communities now, it will reduce the need for more costly, short-term, reactive repairs at a later date.

"Therefore, the third part of the plan forms part of the re-procurement of our highways contract.

"We are looking at ways to work with the private sector to help address this long-term problem by investing in the network to reduce future maintenance costs."

 

Comments(15)

bobby47 says...
12:44pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Sweet loving Jesus! They've finally noticed and said something.
Halleluzah!
But before we get these bloody potholes filled in with the usual unsuitable ingredients this is what will bloody happen.
Let me just bite down on this particularly piece of tough pork rind!
Right, the suits in their hard hats will have a meeting to discuss their logistic approach to this bloody straightforward problem. Remember folks they've got protocols, dynamic risk assessments and cultural waste streams to follow before this lot leave the bloody building.
having decided to fill the potholes in, it's into their vehicles with their hard hats, yellow jackets and some of the cast who might be within close proximity to the shovelling and the filling of the aforementioned bloody potholes.
Having arrived at the scene, they'll alight from their mechanically propelled vehicles, gather around a half decent hole and stare at it for some considerable time. Some will even make notes and phone calls.
Having hundred about doing buggar all they'll all head back, pull up their bloody chairs around the meeting table and the 'chair' will say, 'let's fill in these potholes'.
Theyll then get hold of Councillor Graham Powell who'll sit on his bike and say' we are passionate about the removal of these holes and we are driven to serve our customers. And this digging will be robust'.
Then, it all kicks off and for every bloody hole these folks encounter there will be traffic lights, a dynamic risk assessment and forty staff leaning on a shovel as we all drive buy muttering, 'Get stuffed'.
Of course, this ain't going to be straightforward. Good grief no!
For every bloody hole they can be bothered to fill in there will be a form to complete and that form will whizz its way up and down the corridors of the Council as some twenty or thirty people view it, write on it and then sign it off as completed and a job well done.
By the bloody time this is half done, the heavens will open up, our dear God will urinate upon us. Both the Wye and the Lugg will rise, as will bloody Yazor Brook, vegetation will gather....again and we'll be back to square one. Knackered!

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TwoWheelsGood says...
1:48pm Thu 7 Feb 13

"If we had the cash to carry out the maintenance work needed" - but you do Mr Powell - I pay it to you every year. I have an rss feed off the fixmystreet.com website - every day there's half a dozen or more potholes logged and without exception they say things like 'this was badly fixed a week ago and its already bigger than it was before it was fixed' or 'I've reported this every month for the last 6 months and nothing's been done'. We're undoubtedly paying for VERY poor quality repairs - a complete waste of limited resources. We're also suffering the consequences of abandoning simple and cost-effective routine maintenance such as keeping gulleys and drains clear. I'm curtailing my cycling around our lovely lanes because its becoming too dangerous - complete sections of road have disappeared in places. The Romans knew how to build roads and just as well because we're still using a lot of them. The Welsh know how to build and maintain roads - it’s a joy to cycle or drive there. If the Council have spent £1.4m in the last 3 months on repairs, I've yet to see any of it anywhere I've been. Oh, I lie, we did have 2 men and a barrow down our street shovelling tarmac into holes and carefully compressing it with a well aimed boot. Lasted a whole week. Mr Powell is doing the right thing by trying to break the mindset of costly, short-term, reactive repairs that prevails in this Council. Come on, get this sorted - for an economy to thrive it needs proper infrastructure.

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bobby47 says...
2:08pm Thu 7 Feb 13

TwoWheels, I was just about to put out a where is TWG call and your back.
Well done mate.

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mizza21 says...
2:25pm Thu 7 Feb 13

In fairness they are trying to go about it the right way.
A proper resursafing job is the right way to do it and they should be encouraged with praise.

Well done the council..

Yes you read that right.
Carrot weher it's necessary and if the situation calls for it, then deploy the stick.

Far be it from me to point out the obvious here Bobby and TWG, but it is a requirement of any civil engineering task to have observers who lean on something.

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dippyhippy says...
3:29pm Thu 7 Feb 13

I was surprised to read it was only 258 miles ! So with 2.4 million coming from the government and 1.5 from the council, thats almost 4 million pounds. Christ,for that money I would like the streets to be paved with gold!

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TwoWheelsGood says...
4:00pm Thu 7 Feb 13

dippyhippy - you should know better than to take the Council's words at face value - if you re-read the above, £2.4m is coming from government over the next two years, of which the Council is forward funding £1.5m. So, as I read it, the Council are putting in £0 - so where did my council tax go?

Filling holes, or resurfacing roads, has not evolved much in many years - it’s a simple enough job and, done well, it does the job. It does not need an army of pen pushers for every navvy on the tools - unfortunately we're locked into Amey doing the work, charging top whack for bottom quality and then adding 20% management fee. That’s where my Council tax goes ... and who signed us up for that - oh yes, he's long gone, with a £250k pay off ...

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dippyhippy says...
5:01pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Two wheels. I should know better!! Our King once said I was an optimist - but in the case of the council,its always glass half empty! On a recent thread,another poster suggested contacting Trading Standards,over the poor quality"repairs",if its not fit for purpose,I think its an avenue that should be pursued - thats if the avenue isn't full of pot holes!

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Mr.Herefordian says...
5:08pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Calm down folks, we have been paying for poor highway "repairs" for years. The crater out side my house had a shovel full of cold tar stamped in by a Amey workman, then after a month or so they would come back and do it again, three times last year. Obviously these persons are told to carry out this money wasting work which if done properly would save money. Hopefully who ever takes over this work will be qualified to do it correctly.

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dippyhippy says...
5:18pm Thu 7 Feb 13

As Two wheels has just informed me that we are locked into a contract with Amey, I wouldn't hold your breath Mr. Herefordian !! If Bobby 47 hears you say"calm down" he's likely to choke on his diazepam tablet!!

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bobby47 says...
5:24pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Good grief. Our friend Mr Herefordian has become the first to step out from beneath the cloak of annonimity and describe these potholes for what they really are.
Bloody 'Craters'! My God. That its come to this.
I didn't see this one coming. Ive got a reasonable vocabulary but I didn't think to call these deep holes bloody Craters.
But, Craters they bloody are. Good grief! We deserve better than this. To live in a place that is pot marked with bloody Craters. It's never right, entirely wrong and if my view is worth a jot, totally unacceptable.
I say to this bloody Council, give us flatness. Areas that are geometrically best described as level and without holes, pot holes or worse Craters that no man, woman or animal should be forced to navigate as they stagger home from the daily business of earning money to pay our masters and our ruling elite, namely this bloody Council.
Give us what we want. Give it to us now and after you've given us what we want and yearn for, we'll come up with something else to moan about.

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Biomech says...
6:13pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Bobby it's right with his comments from fix my street. The put hole at the Tesco roundabout was filled in twice, 2 weeks apart. Each time it lasted no more than 5 days (I counted). It even drew the attention of a road repair specialist on twitter

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Biomech says...
6:17pm Thu 7 Feb 13

Also, to the author of this article, when you're typing away and you see that red line appear under a word - that means it's spelt incorrectly. There's actually a built in spell checker that can even fix them for you!

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Gnomie says...
12:31pm Fri 8 Feb 13

When the A40 was de-trunked and became the responsibility of Herefordshire Council rather than the Highways Agency, the council was written a cheque by the government to pay for maintenance. Does anybody know what happened to the money? It certainly wasn't spent on the A40 so far as I can see. The stretch running throrough Weston-under-Penyard
, Lea etc is so badly patched and pot-holed that it would disgrace a Third World country. If the funding we're now hearing about means that this potentially-dangerou
s eye-sore will be sorted out, then three cheers. But I won't be holding my breath...

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Biomech says...
12:54pm Fri 8 Feb 13

I've actually found one place worse than Hereford! ... Sevenoaks, they don't have patches of potholes, they literally have patches of road, it was quite amazing.

(on another note, I've had some interwebs issues and was going to reply to the gay marriage articles today and rephrase my position in light of new information. However, it seems that those articles are the latest to be censored and deleted. Just wanted to let you know that I hadn't run off ;))

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Kingtonian says...
10:49pm Wed 13 Feb 13

There is a better way:-
http://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=7WN8uQnE8
VE

So why can't potholes be fixed smart?

K

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