By Cllr Paul Fishwick
It’s election time, and, lo and behold, all sorts of misinformation has started circulating. One of the areas where the facts need putting straight is road maintenance.
The Borough Council has a duty to maintain all adopted roads and pavements, and the street lights and signs associated with them.
We have trained staff who periodically inspect them, and if they find something dangerous to the public, they will get it fixed. The speed with which the council fixes things depends on how much risk it presents. This is called reactive maintenance.
The £1.7m budget for this was not cut last year or for this year. The criteria we use to judge the state of the roads are the same as they always have been.
Reported ‘pot holes’ are being repaired – but fewer have been reported, so of course that means the number fixed is also going down.
We have a different budget for bigger issues, like resurfacing.
It’s called the structural maintenance budget and despite considerable pressure on our finances has been kept at £4.4 million this year, roughly half funded by the council and half by government grant. This does not include the additional £589,200 provided in the February budget by central government, which is for preventative maintenance. That’s what we Lib Dems plan to spend it on, unlike the previous Conservative administration that diverted extra government ‘pothole’ funding away from where it was intended.
However, this is a drop in the ocean when a national survey published recently shows a growing backlog of £14 billion of road repairs, across England and Wales up from £12.6 billion last year. This is a Conservative government that has and continues to under invest in local highway maintenance across the board.
Until and unless the government funds road maintenance properly, all councils are going to continue to struggle to find the money to ensure roads meet the standard we all want.
Alongside all this, we recognise the need to both reduce congestion and tackle the climate emergency.
The Department for Transport’s own analysis indicates that around 60% of car journeys are only up to 5km and within Wokingham borough, the vast majority of residents live within a 5km radius of the geographic centre. The creation of Active travel routes will enable more of these short journeys to be taken by walking, cycling or public transport.
Other towns and cities across the country and the world have been focused on this for many years and evidence shows that it reduces congestion as people start to choose alternatives.
Improvements to walking and cycling routes are generally funded by central government, not in any way at the expense of road maintenance, and Wokingham Borough has benefited from this by nearly £4M over recent years. This is not a “war on the motorist”, it is sensible policies aimed at making sure we can all get where we want to go and causing less harm to the planet in the process.
Cllr Paul Fishwick is executive member for active travel, transport and highways, and ward member for Winnersh. He is standing for re-election for the Lib Dems on May 4.
