Cost of redoing road repairs in Tayside is £10,000 a month

Tayside road chiefs are forking out £10,000 a month to revisit road works.

Since April 2014, Tayside Contracts has spent £347,957 redoing repairs – including patching, resurfacing and drainage work – carried out by its staff.

Figures show that in the financial year 2014-15, £220,233 was spent correcting work already carried out on roads, which had not been completed properly or where there was an error in the work.

Last year, the figure was £87,958, and this year to date, from April 1, £39,766 has been spent.

Some of the work involved minor corrections to maintenance. In other cases, the work had to be completely redone.

Tayside Contracts provides services, including roads maintenance, throughout Tayside as a commercial trading arm of the councils in the region.

The most costly re-repair was in May 2014, when £66,916 was spent resurfacing part of work at the Waterfront due to “material specification and workmanship”.

Richard Cranney, deputy director of Tayside Contracts, said: “We don’t plan per se to have to undertake remedial work, but when we suspect that it might be required, we will make financial provision to cover the cost.

“Chip loss on surfacing work is usually a function of the weather.

“Either the work will be affected by rain or by colder temperatures than expected.

“Often, when the weather turns, we are faced with either delaying the work or pressing on and undertaking any necessary remedial work later.

“In the interests of ‘getting the job done’ we tend to press on.

“It is worth noting that the 2014-15 cost of remedial work was one half of 1% of turnover and in 2015-16, it was two-tenths of 1% of turnover for the construction division.”