Councils filling potholes 'every 19 seconds'

[robinessex]

Chamon_Lee said:

swisstoni said:

I’m in no way close to the situation but it does seem that private contractors are making a very good living out of it.
I wonder if some other people are too.

Certainly seems to be a great con on the tax payer not to mention the "preferred" partners that are used all the time for the work.
That's the trouble when someone/organization is in-charge of someone else's money.

Tax payer is just used as an endless ATM - whats worst is when government dish out money like its a party people actually believe its "free money" *palm on face*

In Essex, Ringwood Jacob is the main contractor.

https://www.ringway-jacobs.co.uk/

Who we are

We are Ringway Jacobs, a leading highways service provider working with local authorities across the UK.

Formed in 2005, specifically to provide road network management solutions to local government, our unique blend of engineering capability, innovation and customer care make us the best in class.

We are made up of employees with a vast spectrum of skills, delivering roles such as asset management specialists, project managers, maintenance engineers, designers, street lighting and ITS specialists, system developers, stakeholder managers and many more.
In order to be the first choice local authority service provider, we share our clients' challenges and goals. In fact, the majority of our people have previously worked in local government.

Read that last sentence carefully, explains a lot in my opinion.

The website is full of bullst statements

Health and Safety is at the heart of everything we do

It’s our collective commitment to our clients that makes a difference

We are proud of the relationships that we build with our clients. We co-locate with them, working collectively towards shared targets in the delivery of class-leading highways solutions.

In 2015, our strategic partnership with Essex County Council became one of the first relationships of its kind in the United Kingdom to achieve BS11000 – Collaborative Business Relationships and embraces our client, provider and supply chain relationship. In 2016, our Cheshire East Highways partnership also achieved BS11000.

We won the Chartered Institute of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) Collaboration Award each year between 2015 and 2017 for our partnership work with Cheshire East Council, Transport for London and Essex County Council.

[robinessex]

[quote=OpulentBob

The "preferred partner" thing (approved contractors) is because you don't want "Smiffy's Tarmac est. 2021" turning up with a shovel and a rake and a tub of cold repair fixing holes in roads that could have significant safety implications.

And you wouldn't want to put tenders out for every pothole.


[/quote]

1. Next time Harry and Fred turn up here to whack some dodgy tarmac in a pothole hole, I'll video it, and send you a copy.

2. The pothole inspector turns up and paints an orange circle around said pothole. We end up with a dozen or such marked potholes. You've guessed it, EACH POTHOLE GETS A SEPARATE VIST TO FIX IT. I've asked the guy with the shovel 'what about that one and the reply is 'it's not on my ticket.'

This is the location of one. Note the blue paint on a drain cover. Later in the year, 3 more potholes appeared here, each was fixed separately.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.618309,0.3095117...

Edited by robinessex on Thursday 1st April 15:17

[anonymous-user]

All contractors are H&S biased. They HAVE to be in order to win contracts - especially abroad. And most major contractors here, the ones that can deliver multimillion pund schemes, are foreign owned and operate across the world.

As for the rest of your weird, RJ obsession - it shows a significant ignorance of how maintenance contracts work. Almost seems personal. Did your wife run off with a highways inspector or something?

(By the way I know the RJ MD, he's come from the tools. He would accurately address your rant in words of one syllable.)

[robinessex]

OpulentBob said:

All contractors are H&S biased. They HAVE to be in order to win contracts - especially abroad. And most major contractors here, the ones that can deliver multimillion pund schemes, are foreign owned and operate across the world.

As for the rest of your weird, RJ obsession - it shows a significant ignorance of how maintenance contracts work. Almost seems personal. Did your wife run off with a highways inspector or something?

(By the way I know the RJ MD, he's come from the tools. He would accurately address your rant in words of one syllable.)

Ignorant of how maintenance contracts work? I've seen the fiasco with my own eyes. I've only to walk 50 meters from my house, to look at the worst bit of road maintenance I've ever seen. On a completely worn our road surface, years of pothole patching ad finitum. I see you've resorted to a completely unwarranted riposte against my wife, typical of someone who's lost the argument. If the MD of RJ would care to explain to me the crap repairs his company do, I'd be delighted. No shortage of them here to show him.

Below is an example I'm referring to:-



The filled pot hole in the middle distance is the one that cost me £1200 for new wheels and tyres

PS, 'new' potholes have since appeared here.

Edited by robinessex on Thursday 1st April 16:20

[321boost]

And this is a prime example of how stats can be used to make yourself look good or gain support. Even though it’s BS.

[robinessex]

I forgot to add I've 2 buckled are wheels on my XJR. £650 each to replace. Courtesy of the state of UK roads these days.

[Slippydiff]

PaulD86 said:

Max_Torque said:

The issue is not potholes, but simply the under capacity, over use, and zero repair to the roads themselves. "filling in a pot hole" is no use when the top surface of the road itself is worn beyond repair. The proper fix at this point is close the road, scrape the top off, relay, roll and re open. Time consuming & expensive. So cash strapped councils are just filling pot holes to try to avoid actually fixing the problem.

This is why pot holes appear faster than they can be fixed, because the roads are worn out, and filling them is not a robust fix, so they are actually making the problem worse each time........

Exactly. The UK has a road infrastructure that is, literally, crumbling. This is due to years and years of underinvestment. Many roads need resurfaced completely and many need even deeper, structural, repairs. The reason for much of the underinvestment is simple - cut schools, social work, NHS budgets and all hell breaks loose. Cut roads budgets and it barely gets a mention in the press.

The thing that kills roads faster than anything else is water. Unfortunately, with budgets cut, many local authorities have had to cease routine maintenance of gullies (drains). This causes them to silt up and then the road suffers damage.

What then happens is winter comes along and a bit of freeze thaw really breaks up the road. Outcry from public, local press etc. Government response - "let’s throw a whack of money at this". Great. But if a local authority is suddenly handed £XX million that it is not used to having, it won't have the resources to utilise a sudden influx of cash. Also, resurfacing programmes take a huge amount of planning as a LA is expected to prioritise roads appropriately. Pistonheader005 says his road is knackered isn't enough - site assessments need to be carried out. This is very time consuming (however the private sector is starting to offer some services to do this with a degree of automation which, once perfected, will deliver time and financial savings). Anyway, LA needs to spend that money as if an LA ever doesn't spend budget, it will be cut next year. So LA looks to contractors to help spend the money. That's not a simple process either, however, as public sector procurement rules make everything more complicated than necessary. And slower. It also takes a lot of staff time to make sure contracts for external works are prepared correctly - it isn't a case of "hey company X, go and resurface road Y please".

What roads need is correct asset management. This has been identified by numerous reviews and studies. There is slow progress in this respect and the latest code of practice that covers road management pushes LAs in this direction.

But one of the biggest issues is this - many roads could last up to 25+ years if maintained properly. A political term is about 4 years. So you have a roads team who want long term investment strategy and people making decisions as to what they should do based on wanting re-elected in 4 years. And the two are not very compatible. How many councils want to cut, say, schools’ budget to put more money into things like gully cleaning that will make a road last longer? None. This is a vote loser much more than poor roads is.

What is needed is a long-term asset management plan for roads, and then, more importantly, politicians to read them and assign budgets appropriately.

I know this is PH so all council employees are work shy, useless etc, but while some certainly are those things, if you think that's why the roads are how they are then I'm afraid you are way off.

Putting aside pretty much everything else you've said, THIS is the real issue.
But there is another HUGE issue, and from my perspective it's THE largest cause of our road surfaces being compromised, and it's the utilitily companies carrying out sub standard reinstatement of the road surface and its sub structure after they've undertaken infrastructure works in the road.

There would be an easy way to address this, a bond. Put simply, when they dig up the road for ANY reason, they they should be forced to (if they don't already) pay a deposit which would be held by the council for 5 years.

If the reinstatement fails or the edge of the reinstatement causes a failure of the surrounding carriageway, the utility company would be forced to rectify the fault AND the bond would be retained for a further 5 years.

Put bluntly it would ensure the utility companies carried out the reinstatement to decently high standard, or lose what would need to be a bond of sufficient value to make it financially punitive if they don't.

[ddom]

OpulentBob said:

All contractors are H&S biased. They HAVE to be in order to win contracts - especially abroad. And most major contractors here, the ones that can deliver multimillion pund schemes, are foreign owned and operate across the world.

As for the rest of your weird, RJ obsession - it shows a significant ignorance of how maintenance contracts work. Almost seems personal. Did your wife run off with a highways inspector or something?

(By the way I know the RJ MD, he's come from the tools. He would accurately address your rant in words of one syllable.)

Yeah, no bias in your posts, not, at, all

There’s no money, they say. Truth is cheap stty repairs given to cheap stty contractors. Very likely all backhanding each other.

[Tom _M]

Twice as many cars on the roads now as there were 30 years ago, and most of them larger/heavier/more damaging to roads

[kambites]

I think part of the problem is that many roads have been patched so many times that "fixing the potholes" simply doesn't work anymore, even if it's done as well as is reasonably possible (which it often is not). A significant proportion of roads in some areas need completely resurfacing, but that's expensive and takes a long time during which the road is out of action.

[ddom]

kambites said:

I think part of the problem is that many roads have been patched so many times that "fixing the potholes" simply doesn't work anymore, even if it's done as well as is reasonably possible (which it often is not). A significant proportion of roads in some areas need completely resurfacing, but that's expensive and takes a long time during which the road is out of action.

This.

The amount of new housing estates going up is remarkable in some places. They re-surfaced a road locally and a new estate went up. So they dug great big channels in it, amazing. Then they left it to develop the field opposite. It's now a complete mess.

[CoolHands]

OpulentBob said:

The "preferred partner" thing (approved contractors) is because you don't want "Smiffy's Tarmac est. 2021" turning up with a shovel and a rake and a tub of cold repair fixing holes in roads that could have significant safety implications. They need PL insurance. TM tickets. Experience working around utilities. Larger firms get better rates on materials, have bigger workforces that won't shut a shift down because one ganger has gone sick. One tarmac firm I use get through so much material, the plant will open at weekends, at night etc just for them. You won't get that with small contractors. And you wouldn't want to put tenders out for every pothole.

If you tried to administer a multi-million pound maintenance contract using any old Joe Bloggs, the roads would be terrible and the cost would be no less.

Plus there are cost saving/sharing clauses in the contracts that the contractors sign up to.

Agree with the guy who works in complaints above. When we design an improvement scheme, we routinely add-in the resurfacing of the whole road. Ultimately this nearly always gets removed by Clients and QS who are looking to cut costs because budgets have been cut halfway through the year. Roads have a design life of 40 years with major maintenance rquirements after 20 years. Guess how often the budgets for the 20 year maintenance get protected...

Anyone with a driving license is an expert though...

how condescending.

We DO “want "Smiffy's Tarmac est. 2021" turning up with a shovel and a rake and a tub of cold repair fixing holes in roads that could have significant safety implications” cos it would be 10 times better than the absolute st the ‘preferred partners’ (brown envelopes) half-arsedly do now.

[hungry_hog]

Tom _M said:

Twice as many cars on the roads now as there were 30 years ago, and most of them larger/heavier/more damaging to roads

higher population
higher proportion of that population driving
lots of online shopping so delivery vans everywhere
kids not using public transport - being driven to school

and as you say - 2 ton tanks being used as family cars - would have been a Ford Sierra 30 years ago

There is a primary school round the corner - has a catchment area of 1 mile..come 3pm the road is chock full of XC90 / FFRR / RRS / Cayenne / Disco. People queuing outside the gate to drive 1 mile. Lazy idiots.

Edited by hungry_hog on Thursday 1st April 20:23

[Johnnytheboy]

Tom _M said:

Twice as many cars on the roads now as there were 30 years ago, and most of them larger/heavier/more damaging to roads

All of them paying VED and fuel duty.

[Biggy Stardust]

OpulentBob said:

Anyone with a driving license is an expert though...

Those with a licence even more so.

[mikey_b]

LotusOmega375D said:

Our Council tax is going up 6.1% this year. In fact it has gone up 42% in 8 years, so the Council have been raking it in for years and years. They have reduced services (eg. closed local library and associated services) and are getting massive new revenue from the new housing estates that they grant planning permission for on green field sites. The roads are a joke, with the same “bodge and go” attitude to pot holes. They hardly ever resurface properly.

Roads issues aside, your council hasn’t been ‘raking it in’. At least half of their funding comes from central government grants, which have been reduced heavily over recent years, and another chunk of around 15-20% comes from retained business rates. So even if your council tax has gone up 42%, their total budget won’t have gone up by anything like that much as it only compromises about a third of their income to start with.

[kambites]

Councils have been suffering from ever decreasing funding from central government for a good decade, whilst also having limits set on how much they can raise council tax to cover it. The real-terms budget of most local councils is significantly lower than it was 10 years ago.

[Tom _M]

Johnnytheboy said:

All of them paying VED and fuel duty.

Neither of which pay for A/B/local roads

[Johnnytheboy]

Tom _M said:

Johnnytheboy said:

All of them paying VED and fuel duty.

Neither of which pay for A/B/local roads

Policy decision. They pay for *something*.

[stogbandard]

Another thing that has changed over the last 20 years is the quality of the surfacing material. All main roads used to be surfaced using hot rolled asphalt - large lumps of angular aggregate rolled into very fine asphalt. It lasts ages and even as it aged it tended to crack but held together. Some stretches see more than 20 years.

Now it’s stone mastic asphalt - smooth to begin with, supposedly for low noise reasons, thinner too, but you’re lucky to see any last 5 years or more before becoming brittle and disintegrating. If anything, this has accelerated the poor state of read surfaces. How can you keep on top of a road that needs resurfacing possibly four times as often. It might be cheaper but it’s a false economy.

Some local authorities have seen the light and have gone back to using hot rolled asphalt.

Highways England insist on using stone mastic asphalt. Auto link who manages the A19 were constantly having to resurface the stretch through Teesside to replace worn out stone mastic asphalt. Since using hot rolled asphalt it’s been much better - no holes!