Council pothole repairs slammed Residents urges council to ‘learn from its neighbours’
CRITICISM has been levelled at council pothole repairs with a photo example from Macclesfield being being used to highlight the problem.
Ivor Kelly highlighted work done to repair three potholes on Fitzwilliam Avenue, Sutton, this week.
Nearby Walker Lane has also previously been highlighted.
He says Cheshire East did a poor job, left behind debris and could learn a thing or two from neighbouring councils.
Ivor, who took a picture of the work after it was done, said: “This is how Cheshire East ‘repaired’ three potholes.
“They even left behind the debris.
“In my view, this has nothing to do with the lack of central government funding and budget constraints. I fear that after a few days, the surface will break up again.
“Cheshire West is seemingly filling their potholes by cutting out a larger area with square edges and sealing the whole lot with hot tar.”
This week Cheshire East Council’s Labour group spoke out on the issue of potholes, saying the problem was Government underfunding of road maintenance.
The group says it is a nationwide issue with more than half of roads in England and Wales have less than 15 years of ‘structural life’ remaining.
Councillor Laura Crane, from the highways committee, said, “The Tories have underfunded every sector of national infrastructure and the public services we rely on, for 14 years.
“The resulting potholes we all see is testament to their failed austerity project. Recent funding announcements are too little too late.
“The issue of an increasing backlog of road repairs has been ongoing for many years, across all councils.
“Councils simply don’t have the funding they need to keep up with the demand. Funding from central government to Cheshire East Council has fallen by 63 per cent since 2010, and the list of statutory services that the council has to provide is increasing.”
Councillor Mark Goldsmith, chair of the highways and transport committee, said: “The issue of potholes is not unique to Cheshire East – and they’re worse at this time of the year when the weather still hasn’t warmed up – but we absolutely understand the frustration that they can cause and we’re working hard to tackle the increase of them in our borough.
“We’re committed to keeping our roads safe and we’re using our limited budgets in the best possible way. The increase in potholes at this time of year means we may not be able to respond to defects as quickly as we’d like to but we’ve increased the number of teams working to carry out pothole and patching repairs.
“We continue to inspect roads and repair defects that meet our inspection policy requirements, and we do this on a priority basis focused on key routes and according to the level of risk to road safety.
“While our aim is to carry out permanent repairs on road defects, sometimes that is not possible due to weather conditions, the traffic management needed, or the number of defects that have been identified.
“This means that some of the repairs we make are temporary to make sure that the road is safe.”