Agenda item

To receive presentations from the Highways Department and the Local Highways and Streetscene Team regarding the new contractual and operational arrangements.

In attendance will be; Councillor John Thomson, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Highways, Streetscene and Broadband, Parvis Khansari, Service Director for Strategic Services, Highways & Passenger Transport and Tim Woolford, Local Highways and Streetscene Services South.

There will be an opportunity to ask questions to these key people, responsible for the maintenance of highways, green spaces and Streetscene within our community area.

The Chairman welcomed Parvis Khansari, Service Director for Strategic Services, Highways and Transport.

Parvis gave a presentation which included information on Wiltshire’s Highways assets and statistics which showed the condition of A, B and C Roads and distance of roads treated over the last five years, within each community area.

Data on the condition of the road is collected in several ways, these include:

• SCRIM*  -      100% A, B, and some C and UC (Group 1                                              roads that are suitable for survey) approx 1010 kms.

• Scanner -      50% A roads per annum in both directions

                                    100% B roads per annum in one direction

                                    50% C roads per annum in one direction

• CVI** -                        25 % UC roads per annum

• Deflectograph –       approx 20% of A roads per annum in both                                             directions

(*Sideways-force Coefficient Routine Inspection Machine, ** Coarse Visual Inspection)

Much of the maintenance is data driven; Southern Wiltshire’s A roads were rated at a medium level of need of attention. The current road maintenance expenditure for Wiltshire was £14 million. In Southern Wiltshire there are 255kms of roads which equates to 5% of the total network across Wiltshire.

The Board then received a presentation from Tim Woolford, Area Manager South for Highways and Streetscene, and Adrian Hampton, Head of Local Highways and Streetscene South, detailing the recent contractual changes from Ringway to Balfour Beatty which were implemented on 1 June 2013.

The new contract had reduced service providers to just one. The new team would continue to provide all of the old services available but would deliver them in a more community focused way.

Each Community Area across Wiltshire has a community team; this consists of one Community Coordinator and an Engineer per two coordinators. In Southern Wiltshire the Coordinator is Bob Crean and the Engineer for Southern Wiltshire and Salisbury is Graham Axtell, both officers are based at the Wilton depot.

Town and parish councils are able to contact their Community Coordinator directly, members of the public can report all services to the Clarence number 0800 23 23 23.

Comments and questions were then taken, these included:

• Who decides on what work will be done? Answer: We work to ensure that the highways are safe and usable. There will be a session of community days across the community area, where we will be coming out to speak with individual parishes to find out what needs to be done, such as grass cutting, potholes and hedge cutting.
• Who was told about the work which took place in Beech Grange, as the parish council did not know? Answer: Our team will be writing to parish councils to ask them when we should come, as our visit may be tied in with an event already scheduled, which may be of benefit to the parish.
• Some time ago there was a demonstration of a piece of kit which spat out hot tarmac to fill holes, is this equipment still in use? Answer: The machine is called a Unimog, which is a multi purpose vehicle, which can be used for filling potholes, grit cutting, cleaning signs etc. There are 6 of these machines across the county.
• What is done to ensure quality control from the new contractor Balfour Beatty? Answer: The new contractor is still under a mobilisation period. The contract is worth £50 million a year, all work is monitored closely against the contract, and they only get paid for the work they carry out.

Cllr Thomson added that an Officer had been appointed to monitor the new contract. The Council are very active to improve services provided under this contract, when the grass cutting fell behind schedule, Cabinet met to resolve the situation. The numbers of grass cutters then increased from 75 to 100.

A new app for smart phones had been launched and was available to download from the Wiltshire website. The app enables users to report highways maintenance.

·         Cllr Johnson asked why local councillors were no longer receiving the schedule for the year ahead, as he felt it was useful when advising residents within his ward of planned maintenance? Answer: The Highways programme document was now available online.

·         How was the Clarence number promoted? Answer: All phone books and libraries have the number; if people call Wiltshire council the operators will put them through to Clarence.

The Chairman urged anyone involved with parish magazines to also promote the number.

• With the improvements to the IT system, the service schedule would now be online, so if rain causes a delay to the grass cutting, the information would change on the system, to give an accurate schedule of work.

• Would it be possible to notify parish councils when utilities are due to dig up the road? Answer: The council receives over 27,000 applications from utility companies every year to dig up the road; there is usually a link on the website where this information is published.

Road repairs carried out by utility companies following excavation remain their responsibility for 18 months thereafter. Cllr Thomson urged parish councils to keep a note of the date of any utilities works, and to report any refills in a poor condition to the council so that the contractors may be contacted to make the repairs.

A copy of the presentation can be viewed online at:

www.wiltshire.gov.uk/southernwiltshireareaboard