Councils filling potholes 'every 19 seconds'

[robinessex]

Councils filling potholes 'every 19 seconds'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56590518#co...

The number of potholes filled in by councils in England and Wales has increased during the past year to almost 1.7 million, a survey suggests.
The Asphalt Industry Alliance said this figure - up 200,000 from 1.5 million in 2019-20 - equated to one being fixed every 19 seconds.
The total amount spent by local authorities on filling in potholes in 2020-1 was £93.6m, it added.
The government said it was working to ensure "smoother, safer journeys"....................continues

The headline missed a bit:-

New potholes appear every 10 seconds.

The reply by the government:-

The government said it was working to ensure "smoother, safer journeys".

Only one word is adequate for that is b*******s

Unless my eyes and backside are deceiving me, the pothole fiasco continues unchecked. Potholes in the location are increasing exponentially. The privatisation of road maintenance must surely be the biggest con ever perpetrated upon the motoring public. From what I'm seeing there isn't a hope in hell of ever getting out roads back to the condition when I learnt to drive, never saw a pothole in those days. It's about time an enquiry was set up to examine the whole system. It's corrupt beyond belief now.

PS £30 for puncture repair recently due to pothole strike.

PPS Our local authority has UNDERSPENT £1,000,000 on road maintenance in the last financial year.

But a Department for Transport spokesperson said: "This government is providing £2.5bn in funding over five years to help councils improve their roads, to ensure all road users have smoother, safer journeys."

Yearly income from vehicle tax, fuel duty, fuel VAT is £96 Billion. The government is spending 0.5% of that on the roads

Edited by robinessex on Thursday 1st April 09:08

[robinessex]

steveo3002 said:

had one here in south cambs ignored since december ...just filled it in this week

Wow, how did you get it done so quickly? I've seen 18 months here.

[robinessex]

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.

Yes, the council guy who hands out the contracts, has nice holidays abroad. Or his driveway done free.

[robinessex]

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

Some years ago, the bill for a pothole strike was £1200, new wheels and tyres.

[robinessex]

TheBALDpuma said:

robinessex said:

But a Department for Transport spokesperson said: "This government is providing £2.5bn in funding over five years to help councils improve their roads, to ensure all road users have smoother, safer journeys."

Yearly income from vehicle tax, fuel duty, fuel VAT is £96 Billion. The government is spending 0.5% of that on the roads

Edited by robinessex on Thursday 1st April 09:08

I hate potholes as much as the next man, but that's some bad maths

Correct it then

[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

[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

[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.

[robinessex]

My stepdaughter lives in Sweden, the first thing I notice when I go there is the joy of smooth roads.

[robinessex]

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.

[robinessex]

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.

It's because they have a yearly budget. If the money in the Road Repair jar isn't empty at the end of the year, it just gets topped up.

[robinessex]

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.

It's because they have a yearly budget. If the money in the Road Repair jar isn't empty at the end of the year, it just gets topped up.

I’m asking why it has to be like that.

Why can’t there be provision for them to put money aside while they plan improvements.

Find your local councillor, and put the question to him/her. Demand you get a reply as well.

[robinessex]

If you want to change something you have to start somewhere. I suppose you could try calling Boris though, you never know.

[robinessex]

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.

[robinessex]

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 sty substandard to me.

[robinessex]

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?

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.

I was following another but car, didn't get a chance. The Highways tagged its location as 4, the worst. About 2ft to the left of the road center. The only option would be to swerve right, not a good idea.

[robinessex]

As a followup, watch this clip from Youtube of a crosskart being driven on what looks like semi-countryside roads in the USA. Note the almost billiard-smooth surface. Why can't we have those here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNv94AXy8Qw

[robinessex]

stickleback123 said:

robinessex said:

As a followup, watch this clip from Youtube of a crosskart being driven on what looks like semi-countryside roads in the USA. Note the almost billiard-smooth surface. Why can't we have those here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNv94AXy8Qw

Infrastructure in the US is in crisis, for all we have potholes at least we don't have bridges collapsing. One video of a decent bit of road is not indicative of anything whatsoever.

I have relatives in the USA. They've confirmed, after a visit here last year, their roads are orders of magnitude better than ours. My stepdaughter is here from Sweden for Xmas. She's also appalled with our roads, I've been to Sweden, and the roads are nigh on perfect there. I learned to ride a motorbike in 1963, I don't remember any issues with potholes. Wouldn't dream of riding one today though.

[robinessex]

BoRED S2upid said:

robinessex said:

I was following another but car, didn't get a chance. The Highways tagged its location as 4, the worst. About 2ft to the left of the road center. The only option would be to swerve right, not a good idea.

Claim from the council.

It's in the pipeline.