Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

DaveGos
Posts: 275
Joined: 13 Nov 2009, 12:40pm

Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by DaveGos »

The roads around me in East shropshire are so bad I cannot use 3 out of 4 routes out of my village on my road bike I need full suss MTB for them . Its so depressing to hear this which has had little publicity . Consider the country roads are worse than ever and we have had 2 back to back quite hard winters http://www.transport-network.co.uk/Coun ... year/17135
thirdcrank
Posts: 36776
Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by thirdcrank »

... has had little publicity ...


The state of our roads is an important subject on a cycling forum but road maintenance budgets are incapable of being the basis of sensible discussion, except perhaps as examples of spin.

Government announces quadrazillion squids for repairing roads - usually reported with media references to potholes - and it's largely creative accounting/ announcing dosh that's been announced before etc.

Limited real £££ gets through to local authorities who have more pressing demand like child care so highway maintenance is rescheduled AKA booted further down the (badly-maintained) road.

There's probably no better example of "a stitch in time saves nine" than road maintenance but there you are. And if government doesn't announce a huge spending package for highway maintenance, that's less hot air warming the planet. (That's not an attack on highway maintenance btw)
DaveGos
Posts: 275
Joined: 13 Nov 2009, 12:40pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by DaveGos »

Did you read the article , it is an industry website and does go into the funding and its breakdown in some depth. I take your point that it like most government funding can be very smoke and mirrors , but this does attempt to get beyond the figures. Its also been reported in the Shropshire Star as a 25 percent reduction and those responsible who budget for these things and know the detail say they have got a lot less than expected.
DaveGos
Posts: 275
Joined: 13 Nov 2009, 12:40pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by DaveGos »

It also amazes me how crap our political system has become when you announce a significant change in budget 3 weeks before the budget year starts. Surely this stuff needs long term planning EG what you do this year , what you do next year, what quality of repair and maintenance you do . How do they get the labour , materials and capital expenditure on repair equipment when they have no forward visibility of budget . So what happens from what I see is they end up with a couple of blokes manually filling pot holes using a wheelbarrow and spade which they probably transfer between other jobs, the result of this around me is they do not tackle the lanes where there are 100 m sections that have degraded beyond what a man with a wheelbarrow full of tarmac and a shovel , can tackle
thirdcrank
Posts: 36776
Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by thirdcrank »

Did you read the article


I fear I only glanced at it. As I tried to explain, road maintenance is IMO very important. Indeed, I first was lured into wasting my time cycle campaigning many years ago when I submitted a dossier of pics of potholes and the like to Leeds City Council. I've explained elsewhere on here that's where I got the handle thirdcrank.
User avatar
mjr
Posts: 20308
Joined: 20 Jun 2011, 7:06pm
Location: Norfolk or Somerset, mostly
Contact:

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by mjr »

There is no sensible economic way of maintaining an ever-expanding road network being worn ever more quickly by heavier and heavier motor vehicles while several motoring taxes are frozen at levels from a decade ago or more.

Trying to do so is almost literally pouring resources into holes in the ground!

Something's got to change, whether that's taking a harder line to get people to switch from motor vehicles, excluding motor vehicles from parts of the road network to create active travel corridors (as ordered in the government's Gear Change policy), making motor vehicles lighter (electric vehicles may do this while their range is so limited), something else or a mix of all of them.

Simply putting money into road repairs now would be folly.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
DaveGos
Posts: 275
Joined: 13 Nov 2009, 12:40pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by DaveGos »

|To not repair them is folly , they will have to be repaired at some point and you will end up replacing them not repairing them its like not repairing your house at the point its needed , you end up with a hole in the roof and destroyed house. I do not understand why fuel duty does not at least match inflation. If we are to reduce carbon , surely more tax on it will discourage miles. Also vehicle excise and fuel duty is not hypothecated , if it was there would easily be enough money to repair the roads. In reality a lot of the money comes from your rates , which have risen faster than inflation for many years
Mike Sales
Posts: 7883
Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by Mike Sales »

Swingeing cuts on cards as councils in England face funding crisis, watchdog warns


Residents face years more swingeing cuts to local services, from social care to libraries, bin collections and bus routes, as at least 25 councils teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, the public spending watchdog has warned.

According to the National Audit Office, the vast majority of English councils (94%) expect to cut spending next year to meet legal duties to balance their budgets. The “scarring” of council balance sheets since the coronavirus pandemic began has been so fierce that half of town halls do not expect their finances to recover until at least the middle of the decade.

The watchdog said a decade of austerity for local government, which has reduced councils’ spending power by a third at a time when demand for services has soared, had left local authorities more vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic than they otherwise would have been.


It doesn't look likely that pothole repair will get better soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/10/swingeing-cuts-on-cards-as-councils-in-england-face-funding-crisis-watchdog-warns
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
User avatar
mjr
Posts: 20308
Joined: 20 Jun 2011, 7:06pm
Location: Norfolk or Somerset, mostly
Contact:

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by mjr »

DaveGos wrote:|To not repair them is folly , they will have to be repaired at some point and you will end up replacing them not repairing them its like not repairing your house at the point its needed , you end up with a hole in the roof and destroyed house.

I'm saying they should be repaired, but after the cause of the backlog is removed. Fixing them now is like repairing a house while someone is still smashing a wrecking ball against it.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
fastpedaller
Posts: 3435
Joined: 10 Jul 2014, 1:12pm
Location: Norfolk

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by fastpedaller »

mjr wrote:
DaveGos wrote:|To not repair them is folly , they will have to be repaired at some point and you will end up replacing them not repairing them its like not repairing your house at the point its needed , you end up with a hole in the roof and destroyed house.

I'm saying they should be repaired, but after the cause of the backlog is removed. Fixing them now is like repairing a house while someone is still smashing a wrecking ball against it.

It seems to be the case in Norfolk that any repairs are delayed beyond the time that a repair is easier/more likely to succeed - They seem to leave anything reported during Summer, and not fix it until there is pouring rail in Autumn, or until Winter has been and gone. The defect is then worse than it was in the Summer - still it makes sense to them? Near us they 'fixed' a crater around a drain in December, the filling fell out in February, and I've now reported it 3 times in as many weeks. How to get some action?
thirdcrank
Posts: 36776
Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by thirdcrank »

I see that the tarmac industry's lobbyists are lobbying

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56590518
ChrisButch
Posts: 1188
Joined: 24 Feb 2009, 12:10pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by ChrisButch »

Not much chance of this glimmer of light surviving, then:

https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=139402&p=1509545#p1509545
atlas_shrugged
Posts: 534
Joined: 8 Nov 2016, 7:50pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by atlas_shrugged »

You guys seem to all be quite gloomy about road repairs to make cycling nicer.

I am really sorry but I have to agree with you all. I have spent at least the last 3 years contacting every local councillor and MP about improving cycling infrastructure. The result has be absolutely hopeless. All of the major parties are completely useless and have no interest in improving the cycling experience. I especially would like to see improvements in cycling safety. In Cranebridge we have had three cyclists tragically killed during Lockup#1. Two were killed on roundabouts and one was hit from behind on a completely straight road. Fast forward 5 years to a secret inquest held in John-o-groats to not find out what happened!

The only party to seem to want to help is the Green party and they have no chance of power. They also want to lock me up after 6pm!

I see no reason to change my stance of not voting. There has to be a better way of forcing constructive change.
Campag
Posts: 94
Joined: 2 Dec 2018, 8:04pm

Re: Council road repairs cash down £400m next year

Post by Campag »

Not voting won't change anything. That's why the Tories and the Republicans in the USA try to restrict voting rights and manage information.

If you want things to change it does require taking action. For example, vote. Or take part as a volunteer in a useful local organisation. Or when you go for a walk, take a plastic bag and pick up some litter. Or instead of driving to a shop a mile away, cycle. Or donate to a food bank (although that just enables the current system rather than changing it).
Post Reply