Highway schemes set to be reviewed

ROADS: Major roadworks schemes brought forward to ensure smooth routes for a fourday international cycling race are set to be reviewed following the event being cancelled.

North Yorkshire County Council will reconsider whether pressing ahead with the plans will be the best use of the funding.

MAJOR ROADWORKS schemes brought forward to ensure smooth routes for a four-day international cycling race are set to be reviewed following the event being cancelled.

North Yorkshire County Council, which has agreed to spend £814,000 on repairing and resurfacing roads ahead of the sixth running of the Tour de Yorkshire, will reconsider whether pressing ahead with the plans will be the best use of the funding.

In recent years the Conservative-led authority has faced a number of challenges from opposition members over focusing its efforts on creating high-specification surfaces for cyclists, meaning work on roads that better meet the standard criteria for repairs is delayed.

Since the event was called off earlier this month the authority, which in 2018 estimated it had a £300m road repairs backlog, has faced calls to divert the funding to areas which residents claim have been overlooked.

Ahead of this year’s race, which was due to start on April 30, the authority was due to “accelerate” work on the A165 Gristhorp Bypass, in Scarborough, at a cost of £570,000, and spend £82,000 on the B6479 Helwith Bridge, in the Yorkshire Dales, £150,000 on the A684 at Leyburn, Hawes, Constable Burton and Akebar as well as £12,000 on patching repairs across Harrogate district.

The authority’s executive member for highways, Councillor Don Mackenzie said the council was expecting to announce plans for additional road repairs in the coming weeks and would also examine whether the plans for the Tour de Yorkshire roads should go ahead this year.

He said: “These are roads that would have been repaired in some way but the schedule was brought forward in order for us to carry out the work in advance of the Tour de Yorkshire.

“It was called off only a few days ago, so in the coming weeks we will look to review the schedules.

“Following the Chancellor’s budget statement we are expecting an another substantial tranche of money for highways repairs and in the coming days or weeks will confirm what our additional plans are.”

He said the county’s 5,750-mile road network was surveyed on a rolling maintenance programme to ensure the routes that needed repairs most urgently were prioritised.

Last week, new figures showed that the number of potholes repaired in England and Wales fell by a fifth in the past 12 months amid a decline in road maintenance budgets,

Local authorities filled 1.5 million potholes in the 2019/20 financial year, compared with 1.9 million during the previous 12 months, according to the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA).

Over the same period, councils saw their average highway maintenance budgets fall by 16 per cent, while the typical amount they paid out in compensation for damage caused by poor road conditions increased by 17 per cent to £8.1m.

Getting all roads back into a “reasonable, steady state” would cost £11.14bn and take 11 years, the research found.

This is up from £9.79bn and 10 years in 2018/19.

The AIA says the estimated one-time cost to get roads in Yorkshire and Humberside back into reasonable condition is £1.26bn. This works out at £89.7m per local transport authority, a higher average than the rest of England.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in his Budget £2.5bn of extra funding over the next five years to tackle potholes on England’s local roads.

These are roads that would have been repaired in some way.

Coun Don Mackenzie, North Yorkshire County Council.