Councils filling potholes 'every 19 seconds'
Discussion
CoolHands said:
ow 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 s
t the ‘preferred partners’ (brown envelopes) half-arsedly do now.
very much this ^^^ A half trained and pissed-up baboon could likely do a better and longer lasting 'repair' job filling in the potholes with their faeces than what's being done at the moment.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 s
t the ‘preferred partners’ (brown envelopes) half-arsedly do now.There doesn't seem to be any incentive to do the job right. Pot hole filled? Goodo, on your way.... 3 months later THE. EXACT. SAME. f
kING. SPOT . has another pothole? Goodo, more money to the contractor who fked up the last 'repair'
CoolHands said:
I don’t understand why bloke from council doesn’t inspect repairs by these contractors and go ‘nope, not paying’, (until it’s done right). In most jobs you are supervised to make sure you do what you’re meant to!
Better than that. When my local County Counsel (Conservatives) was challenged to a debate over the state of the roads by the entire political opposition, they got voted down. The conservative spokesmen said he'd checked the quality of the roads repairs undertaken by the contractors and was satisfied with it. Make of that what you want. I know I have thoughts about it.PaulD86 said:
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.
I have never understood this element of accounting. And I’ve heard it forever.If we had to spend all our wages every month (else get paid less next month) I’d imagine we’d end up making some pretty bad, expensive, short term decisions.
No, we save money up over months and do something which is better thought out and long lasting.
Local authorities don’t seem to be able to ‘save up’ for things.
swisstoni said:
PaulD86 said:
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.
I have never understood this element of accounting. And I’ve heard it forever.If we had to spend all our wages every month (else get paid less next month) I’d imagine we’d end up making some pretty bad, expensive, short term decisions.
No, we save money up over months and do something which is better thought out and long lasting.
Local authorities don’t seem to be able to ‘save up’ for things.
robinessex said:
swisstoni said:
PaulD86 said:
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.
I have never understood this element of accounting. And I’ve heard it forever.If we had to spend all our wages every month (else get paid less next month) I’d imagine we’d end up making some pretty bad, expensive, short term decisions.
No, we save money up over months and do something which is better thought out and long lasting.
Local authorities don’t seem to be able to ‘save up’ for things.
Why can’t there be provision for them to put money aside while they plan improvements.
swisstoni said:
robinessex said:
swisstoni said:
PaulD86 said:
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.
I have never understood this element of accounting. And I’ve heard it forever.If we had to spend all our wages every month (else get paid less next month) I’d imagine we’d end up making some pretty bad, expensive, short term decisions.
No, we save money up over months and do something which is better thought out and long lasting.
Local authorities don’t seem to be able to ‘save up’ for things.
Why can’t there be provision for them to put money aside while they plan improvements.
Slippydiff said:
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.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........
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.
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.
Sometimes developers pay a bond over road condition, however sadly they are often low enough they just write the money off and leave a mess.
The easing of burden on private contractors was not a good move. Sadly this is not something LAs can do anything about and is a legal/government level problem to fix. I'm not aware of any government ever having expressed any interest in sorting this out.
Spring seems to have arrived, so I thought I'd just pop down to the local garden center for some new fence panels for the garden. Never got there, Henry struck a fearsome pothole, a gas strut has gone for the chop. Expensive. I must seek out the local conservative councilor who, with local elections due, has taken credit for local road repairs that have been needed for the last 10yrs. That's the Conservative who voted to reduce the Essex road maintenance bill by a few millions in the coming year. Needless to say, a claim against the council is on its way.
This one used to be in my daily commute, it’s been like this for over 2 years despite at least one serious injury to a cyclist.
At worst it was nearly 7” deep.
https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2022/04/lincolnshire-h...
It’s a rat run for the local quarry lorries fully loaded up back to the A46 and a tight junction as well.
As you can see they patched it where the patch lasted less than 24 hours before it was torn up and out again by the lorries.
They are now going to repair the junction. Only 2 years and about 20 visits to patch it again. To come to the conclusion a 5 year old could have come to in 1 minute. It needs a proper repair. No wonder there fighting a losing battle when some st for brains keeps making the wrong decision about 20 times in a row. It would have been cheaper just to do it right first time.
At worst it was nearly 7” deep.
https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2022/04/lincolnshire-h...
It’s a rat run for the local quarry lorries fully loaded up back to the A46 and a tight junction as well.
As you can see they patched it where the patch lasted less than 24 hours before it was torn up and out again by the lorries.
They are now going to repair the junction. Only 2 years and about 20 visits to patch it again. To come to the conclusion a 5 year old could have come to in 1 minute. It needs a proper repair. No wonder there fighting a losing battle when some s
t for brains keeps making the wrong decision about 20 times in a row. It would have been cheaper just to do it right first time. robinessex said:
Spring seems to have arrived, so I thought I'd just pop down to the local garden center for some new fence panels for the garden. Never got there, Henry struck a fearsome pothole, a gas strut has gone for the chop. Expensive. I must seek out the local conservative councilor who, with local elections due, has taken credit for local road repairs that have been needed for the last 10yrs. That's the Conservative who voted to reduce the Essex road maintenance bill by a few millions in the coming year. Needless to say, a claim against the council is on its way.
Ah yes. Local elections. That might explain why we had one of those patch blasting rigs tidying up our road last week.robinessex said:
Spring seems to have arrived, so I thought I'd just pop down to the local garden center for some new fence panels for the garden. Never got there, Henry struck a fearsome pothole, a gas strut has gone for the chop. Expensive. I must seek out the local conservative councilor who, with local elections due, has taken credit for local road repairs that have been needed for the last 10yrs. That's the Conservative who voted to reduce the Essex road maintenance bill by a few millions in the coming year. Needless to say, a claim against the council is on its way.
Update. Henry has been written off, so he's gone to the classic car cemetery in the sky. I made the mistake of not getting an agreed value for him on the insurance, so the typical insurance payout gets me half what it will cost to replace him. I'm on the case of the highway authority though, their reply regarding the road maintenance on that section of road where the pothole was/is full of errors, if not at least one outright lie. If anyone knows of a highway engineer who'd like to gawp at the picture I took of the pothole, it would be nice to get his opinion of the repair, it looks very tyDailyHack said:
No quick enough for me, £250 for new damper and spring from a shocking pot hole I hit in the road last week! 
Roads are an utter disgrace! Even sold my road bike due to this and stuck to my MTB on the road, it is lethal out there
Can I ask why you couldn't avoid the hole, or slow down to limit the damage?Roads are an utter disgrace! Even sold my road bike due to this and stuck to my MTB on the road, it is lethal out there
We get quite a few pot holes here, especially in the winter, but I manage to avoid pretty much all of them without too much trouble, or if they are unavoidable at least slow down to reduce any impact.
Olivergt said:
DailyHack said:
No quick enough for me, £250 for new damper and spring from a shocking pot hole I hit in the road last week!
Roads are an utter disgrace! Even sold my road bike due to this and stuck to my MTB on the road, it is lethal out there
Can I ask why you couldn't avoid the hole, or slow down to limit the damage?Roads are an utter disgrace! Even sold my road bike due to this and stuck to my MTB on the road, it is lethal out there
We get quite a few pot holes here, especially in the winter, but I manage to avoid pretty much all of them without too much trouble, or if they are unavoidable at least slow down to reduce any impact.
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