Agenda item

The Board is asked to consider the recommendations in the Highways Maintenance report attached to the agenda and to receive a presentation from Diane Ware, Principal Highways Officer.

Recommendations:

(i)             To welcome the road surfacing work and repairs carried out in 2018/19 and notes the improvement in the overall condition of Wiltshire’s roads in recent years, but acknowledges that further investment is still required.

(ii)            To approve the highway maintenance scheme list for 2019/20 prepared for the Area Board.

(iii)          To note the new provisional five year programme, which will reviewed annually to ensure best value for money and whole life costing for the highways asset.

Diane Ware, Principal Technical Officer for Highways gave a presentation on the proposed Highways Maintenance schedule for 2019/20.

The Board was asked to approve the recommendations as set out in the report attached to the agenda.

Highways funding has been divided out across the 18 Community Areas, by road mileage.

The presentation detailed road conditions on A, B and C roads within Southern Wiltshire. The roads were assessed for works by the survey vehicle. data then processed and maps produced.

To completely reconstruct a road would cost approximately £450 per m², that entails taking the whole road out including the sub base areas which could also be done in isolated areas rather than the whole road, in some situations. To patch and surface dress can cost around £65 per m². Surface dressing on its own was in the region of £5.30 per m² and a surface course can cost between £28 per m² and £50 per m^2. To create a good surface the underlying structure needs to be patch repaired, and to re do the whole of our network would cost something in the region of £7.5 Billion.

Some roads had suffered heat stress during last summer, there would be more reactive patching works carried out this year.

The Chairman clarified that the proposed programme as detailed in the agenda was fixed, so any case for a change would impact on the works currently listed. New additions would see something else move down the list, however the order of priorities was open to our influence.

Questions:

·       How long do the patching works carried out with the machine last? Answer: 2-3 years. A full-scale repair will last 15-20 years.

·       Cllr McLennan added that the last time he had asked the service Director he had advised that any white lines and mini roundabouts had to be faded to 30%, before they could be considered for painting, had that criteria gone?

·       These graphs paint a depressing picture. Answer: We had now changed to funding by condition rather than by length of roads.

Cllr Clewer noted that the council had been given additional funding and had been putting an extra £6m a year into Highways works.  This year, the works include extra white lining, if you have white lines that need doing, then please report now. Pavements are another area which had not received significant funding in the past, please report on the app. Get your PCs to report anything that needs doing so that it is logged on the list.

Decision:

The Southern Wiltshire Area Board agreed:

(i)             To welcome the road surfacing work and repairs carried out in 2018/19 and notes the improvement in the overall condition of Wiltshire’s roads in recent years, but acknowledges that further investment is still required.

(ii)           To approve the highway maintenance scheme list for 2019/20 prepared for the Area Board.

(iii)         To note the new provisional five year programme, which will reviewed annually to ensure best value for money and whole life costing for the highways asset.