Highways team was called out to almost 8,000 issues
West Sussex County Council’s highways team has been called out to almost 8,000 emergency issues in the past two years.
Seven of them – flooding at Shripney, Pagham and Bognor Regis, embankment failures at Duncton, Pulborough and Wiston Bends, and the Angel Inn fire at Midhurst – were classed as major highway incidents.
The figures were shared during a scrutiny committee meeting where members wereaskedtoconsiderwhether the council’s approach to major incidents was still appropriate given that extreme weather was forecast to increase in the coming years. The committee made a number of suggestions including the need for a steering group to be set up whenever a major incident took place. Such a group would include councillors local to the incident.
Another suggestion was that a contingency budget should be created specifically to help pay for the fallout from major incidents. The idea was put forward by Nigel Jupp (Con, Southwater & Nuthurst), who estimated that the seven major incidents had put a £2m dent in the highways budget. Mr Jupp also spoke about the embankment failure in December 2022 which caused a landslide and blocked the A29 at Pulborough. The fallout from that incident is still being dealt with and is being looked into by the council’s legal team.
Joy Dennis, cabinet member for highways & transport, acknowledged the concrete blocks currently in place ‘don’t look particularly sightly’ but added the road was running ‘very satisfactorily’. She said: “Looking back on it, we had hoped for a resolution much more quickly. It didn’t happen and we kept hoping – and I think we hoped for too long."
The meeting was told that 75,000 inquiries had been made to the highways team in the past year – that number was usually around 50,000 to 55,000.
Mrs Dennis said the teams had been ‘overwhelmed’ and morale had been low. The situation was not helped by the abuse which has been faced by staff while trying to do their work on the county’s roads.
Officers said the aim was to spend part of the 2024/25 budget on staff and resources.