Road repairs ‘high priority’ for council

Last week’s edition featured Coun Chris Wray raising the issue of road repairs and maintenance in Dodworth.

For the sake of balance, I do want to take the opportunity to put on record that repairing and maintaining roads in Dodworth ward, and right across the borough, is a high priority for Barnsley Council.

That’s why we have invested over £20m into Barnsley’s highway network in 2023/24 and delivered an accelerated programme throughout the summer to repair the majority of identified roads before winter starts to bite.

Fixing our roads, investing in our communities, unlocking economic opportunities… that is Barnsley Council’s priority when it comes to highway maintenance.

I’m hugely proud of staff in the highways department who have been working quite literally around the clock to deliver this programme and repair Barnsley’s roads.

Of course, we can’t repair every road in the borough immediately, as much as we’d like to. We have to assess the condition of the road and the risk it poses to road users and focus investment on those areas in greatest need of intervention.

The cold and wet weather we have experienced recently will inevitably mean greater numbers of potholes emerging in the coming weeks.

But I want to reassure residents that our teams are ready to assess and repair potholes as soon as we are aware of them.

Residents can play their part by reporting any potholes to us through the Barnsley Council website so these can be assessed and repaired by our engineers as quickly as possible.