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By Cllr Paul Fishwick
We have retained our highways maintenance budget of £1.82m (Reactive maintenance), £2.1m (WBC capital funded) and £2.2m of government capital grant) against significant financial pressures.
This is the same budget as the Conservatives had last year.
Nationally across England and Wales the latest Annual Local Authorities Road Maintenance study found that there was a backlog of over £12.6 billion in local road repairs, and its only getting worse.
This Conservative government and the previous Conservative-run council have under invested in local highways for the past decade. This is not something that has recently happened. We therefore call on government to reverse this now to stop the local road network declining further.
I would urge all residents concerned about potholes to write to their MP asking for more government support for Wokingham Borough council to sort this problem out.
The Conservatives have allowed Wokingham to be the lowest funded unitary authority in the country for the last 14 years. The government must do more to help Wokingham residents.
Highway safety inspections
The Borough Council has a duty to maintain all adopted highway assets within its area.
To ensure the duty is fulfilled, it carries out periodic highway safety inspections of various assets, including the road to ensure they are safe for public use.
Any found to be safety critical will be addressed by carrying our repair work. These reactive maintenance works, such as filling in ‘potholes’ are paid for using revenue funding that comes from your Council tax.
In between scheduled highway safety inspections defects will be reported by highways staff at WBC, but the public can also report these on the borough council web site. Any that are found to meet the criteria for repair will be fixed.
Highway condition surveys
A second and separate inspection of the road network is carried out annually to capture the condition of the asset based on a national standard.
That data obtained from these surveys allows the council to maintain an up-to-date central record of the asset condition and programmed works within available budgets to extend assets longevity.
This funding comes from two sources: a government grant and capital borrowing, which must then be paid back through council tax revenue, plus interest.
Resurfacing and preventative maintenance
As I have said there has been significant under investment by both the Conservative government and by the previous Conservative council.
While we would all like to see new resurfaced roads, these are very expensive. We have maintained the budget for resurfacing, but moved to a more preventative maintenance plan, to arrest the deterioration and prevent more roads ‘slipping’ into the much more expensive resurfacing category.
This approach maximises the cost effectiveness and allows us to maintain more of the network with the limited budget that we have.
Potholes, resurfacing and preventative maintenance
Within Wokingham Borough around 5,300 openings of the carriageway are made each year, and approximately 75% of these are carried out by the utilities (gas, electric, telecoms and water).
Every time the carriageway is dug up, the joint between the reinstatement and the original carriageway becomes a weakness.
The weather can also have a significant impact on how quickly a road will deteriorate especially during very wet and cold/icy conditions.
Our biggest problem in Wokingham is lack of investment from the Conservatives.
We should also remember that the government keeps 100% of car tax (Vehicle Excise Duty) this money does not come to the council.
Cllr Paul Fishwick, Executive member for Active Travel, Transport and Highways, and Lib Dem ward member for Winnersh
