As I write, our programme of surface dressing of roads is just coming to an end, a part of this year’s £5m spent on planned maintenance of roads, cycleways and pavements in the borough. The locations for this work are carefully selected by our engineering team to address the most pressing structural issues identified in our year-round inspections.
Whilst this is a substantial undertaking, the work can only address a small fraction of our overall road network. The money available to us to maintain roads is woefully inadequate, with real-terms reductions in government funding over successive years, a growing network of roads and ever-increasing traffic volumes and vehicle weights. With enormous financial pressures on every council in the country, but particularly in Wokingham, road maintenance is a huge challenge, with a national total of over £16 Billion of overdue maintenance estimated, roughly equivalent to £500 per taxpayer.
Our focus is on keeping the roads safe and making the available money go as far as possible. On the busiest roads with the biggest issues, we have no option other than to remove the existing road surface and relay it. This full resurfacing process is very costly but, this year, we have carried it out on 20 roads in part or full. Where the circumstances allow, we use an alternative process called surface dressing. For the same money as full resurfacing we can surface dress five times as much. The results aren’t as nice to cycle or drive on, but the road remains safe, much less likely to develop potholes and should not require further structural maintenance for many years.
This year in total we will maintain around 232,000 square meters of road surface across 118 roads, in a mix of roughly 1:4 resurfacing to surface dressing. Each road has a specific design for the work, against which it is inspected on completion and at regular intervals in the year afterwards. With the volume of work undertaken, it is always possible that quality issues will arise and residents are encouraged to report these to us. The best way to do this is via our Highways General Enquiries tool at wokingham.gov.uk/hge and select “resurfacing works” as the category. Any significant defects are passed to the contractor for repair under warranty. Please remember that if your road has been surface dressed rather than fully resurfaced, there is a bedding-in period and small variations due to the underlying surface are to be expected and may not be classed as a defect.
Whilst the overall financial outlook remains bleak, we are always looking to improve what we do. Last year we carried out a surface sealing process to extend the life of many older roads which were still in good condition, to defer the point when more significant work will be needed. This year we added a dedicated liaison officer to the team to improve communication with residents on how work on their road will affect them. When this year’s activity is complete we will undertake a ‘lessons learned’ exercise including reviewing all customer feedback, which will guide us for next year. Our overall focus remains on keeping the roads, cycleways and pavements safe, and on making taxpayers money go as far as possible.
You can read more about our road maintenance programme on our website at: wokingham.gov.uk/roads/road-maintenance/looking-after-our-roads.
Cllr Adrian Betteridge, Executive Councillor for Active Travel, Transport and Highways
