Deep potholes cause concerns
Concerns have been raised that Calderdale Council is having to keep “applying sticking plasters” to potholes because it does not have the cash to resurface roads.
A meeting of the council’s place scrutiny board were told when patching potholes becomes more an issue of full route repair, the amount of budget available to undertake the task comes into play.
It’s carriageway maintenance programme represents approximately £3.2m of currentlyavailablecapitalfunding in a year and it has £780,000 in fund earmarked for repairing potholes.
The backlog of maintenance work on classified and unclassifiedroadsisestimated to cost £28m and a whopping £248m respectively.
Councillors asked officers if different techniques, equipmentandmaterialswerebeing lookedintotoimprovepothole repairs.
Coun Dot Foster (Lab, Sowerby Bridge) said she had reported six or seven roads together recently and thanked repair gangs for doing their best with the available budgets.
“There are some where there are potholes the size of dinner plates – there’s a couple where you might lose a small child in them if they get any deeper,” she said.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that we don’t have enough budget to resurface all the roads that desperately need it and all we can do is keep applying sticking plasters."
Coun Katie Kimber (Lab, Luddenden Foot) and highlighted instances where single carriageway roads suffering fromalotofwaterrunoffinrural parts had potholes repaired quicklybutshowedmoredamage just a week later.
“What are products are we using and what is the system we’ve got – could we save money in the long run by using something else?" she asked.
Officers said alternatives including jetpatching had been trialled in Calderdale and it was great for big rural shires but not a good solution for more populated areas.
The underlying problem was, where potholes appeared and then new ones appeared soon after one on the same stretch had been repaired, that indicated the road was nearing the end of its life and requiring majorwork,whichwassubject to available budget.
Many Calderdale roads were originally constructed in the era of horses and carts and were now subject to modern heavy traffic which affects them.