44 routes soon to be resurfaced

PRIORITISED FOR THE POTHOLES

HIGHWAYS bosses have revealed which streets in the city it plans to resurface in the next financial year to deal with potholes and other defects.

Leicester City Council has prioritised 44 routes to be repaired from the beginning of April.

They include stretches of busy A-roads as well as side streets.

City council head of highways Martin Fletcher, right, explained how the roads had been prioritised for repairs.

“Each year we carry out continual surveys,” he said. “On the main roads they are quite detailed scanner surveys, and on the side roads it is more of a visual inspection.

“That allows us to see which are in the worst condition. That helps us get the measure of what we need to do and when.”

“That isn’t the only factor,” he added. “We look at things like how often we are having to repair a certain road, if we are getting petitions, what ward councillors tell us about their patches.

“We also look at roads where we might be getting higher than normal compensation claims.

“After all that, some roads start to come to the top of the list and help us programme the works.

“We do have be flexible though. All sorts of things can happen which mean we have to carry out emergency repairs so the list can change through the year.

“We had to do it with Krefeld Way, for example, before Christmas.”

“We have 515 miles of roads in the city and we could spend £10 million in a year and not get them all fixed,” said Mr Fletcher.

“You couldn’t do them all at one time anyway, because you need to manage the roadworks.”

The city council says there have been 4,490 reported potholes in the past five years.

However many more pot holes – 21,369 – have been identified and repaired over that period at a cost of £18,117,294.