Council’s highways service speeds up pothole repair times

Tuesday, 21 March 2023 09:40

By David Murphy

Rochdale Borough Council has boosted pothole repair times by almost 20 per cent, nearly a year after the service was brought in-house to drive improvements.

A number of highways services, which were previously delivered by external contractors, were brought back into council control in March 2022 to give the authority more flexibility over how it maintains and improves the borough’s roads. More than 96 per cent of pothole repairs are now carried out within 20 working days of being reported, up from 78.25 per cent between March 2021 and March 2022. In addition to the contract change, the council has invested in new machinery and technology, which has also helped push performance up. Drainage, gully cleaning and winter maintenance, including gritting, have also been brought in house, alongside out of hours call out. In addition to reactive pothole repairs, the council carries out much bigger projects, including full road resurfacing schemes and surface dressing. The council has invested £18m over the last five years in these types of schemes and will build on this by investing a further £17.5m over the next five years. This is in addition to the £1.5m a year the council receives from government to support the road repair programme, taking the total investment to £25m. Councillor Danny Meredith, cabinet member for highways at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “Speeding up repair times was one of the reasons for making these changes, so it’s great to see that our residents are already feeling the benefits. We know the state of our roads is a major issue for people, and that’s why we’re continuing to plough significant investment into our highways, with a number of large scale improvement schemes continuing to take place over the coming years, in addition to our day to day pothole repairs.” The council has recently completed resurfacing at Kings Road in Kingsway and Hillside Drive in Middleton and a new zebra crossing has been installed at Kirkway in Middleton, with puffin crossing upgrades at Halifax Road and Church Street in Littleborough. Pavement reconstruction is taking place on a number of streets, including Palatine Street in Kingsway and Wordsworth Crescent in Littleborough, while carriage resurfacing is set to start imminently at Caldershaw Road in Rochdale and Kirkstall Avenue in Littleborough. Traffic calming schemes are set to take place soon in Bertha Road, Rochdale and Mellalieu Street, Middleton. Anyone who would like to report a roads issue, can do so at: rochdale.gov.uk/highways