Potholes - County Councils avoiding responsibility

[fastpedaller]

Thankfully I haven't recently suffered injury from a pothole (that seems to be one of the 'criteria' required). I also don't think there will be an outcome from features/report anyway - the dangers of potholes are well known, we need the Councils and national Highways (or whatever they are called this week) to take their responsibilities seriously (or sack the staff until they do). Seems like a reflection of any large organisation these days to be fair.

[Ron]

Seems like a reflection of any large organisation these days to be fair.

The large organisation failing us is central government, local government can only spread its meagre resources thinly.

[Jdsk]

The large organisation failing us is central government, local government can only spread its meagre resources thinly.

This is such an important point. And it is worth repeating every time that we talk about road maintenance and condition. (And the numbers are readily available to support it.)

Thankyou

Jonathan

[tim-b]

Local government wastes money and are no better than central government in that respect.
If they acted on things that need doing then we'd all be better off, which isn't the immediate responsibility of central government.
As an example a crossroads near to me had one serious injury collision per year (B-road crossing A-road). Local government changed the layout, caused 10 collisions in the first fortnight and changed the layout back.
Developer built a new housing estate. As part of the deal, the developer was supposed to fund a section 106 community agreement, but because local government didn't use the money it had to be refunded (total over several developments £900,000 in one year). The public got to fund the community development and thousands of potholes (or whatever) were ignored
There are plenty more where that came from...

[simonineaston]

As a general rule, local government have been deliberately and consistantly starved of funding over the past decades, by the adhearence of succesive political parties to the princicples of Friedrich Hayek and the neoliberals. Recall that Thatcher once famously declared that there is no such thing as society. She had in mind the groups and practices that make up the way we live as social animals, local government being a good example.
Thus if you vote Tory, you should expect poor council services, unattended potholes, poor quality school lunches, long ambulance waits and so forth. The Torys and their cronies gleefully pocket the profits from their outsourcing behemoths instead.

[Nearholmer]

If you make a list of all the services that various levels of local council are obliged by law to provide, then look at their ability to raise funds, you will find that the stretch of money to cover tasks is ridiculously thin, wherever you live, and if you live in an area where the leading party is one voted in on a “low council tax” mandate things will be thinner still (because the voters voted it to be thus).

That having been said, there does seem to be pretty solid evidence that unitary authorities, rather than two layer county-district, are more effective/efficient.

I would recommend anyone who thinks their local council is a sink-pit of money wasting inefficiency to seek election as a councillor, because if they then get elected they will be able to participate in the money-stretching exercise personally, helping to decide which day-care centre should have its opening hours cut to fund more pot-hole filling, or whether to close the swimming pool over the winter to save energy costs so that bin-emptying doesn’t have to slide-out to three-weekly, that sort of thing.

None of which excuses the worst of dangerous pot-holes or unanswered ‘phones, but it does point out that trying to get a quart out of a pint pot is impossible.

[thirdcrank]

"Older readers" will know that this is a frequently recurring topic. My embarrassingly high back catalogue of posts includes plenty of links to legal sources. It's a complicated subject but I don't remember anything which says a traffic authority (?) can neglect the repair of its roads through budgetary constraints. IIRC, one perennial media topic has been the extent to which the amount of compo and associated legal costs exceeds the road repair budgets.

Re the OP, if there is a dangerous road defect, an authority cannot simply say that it's in their plan for eventual repair. If they are unaware of a defect, then there's the defence that they had a reasonable inspection regime which had not revealed it. Once a defect is reported, then they are left claiming things like the road was ok to be left unrepaired.

(That's all in layman lingo. But covered with links over the years to learned friend sources.)

[Nearholmer]

but I don't remember anything which says a traffic authority (?) can neglect the repair of its roads through budgetary constraints

Spot on; they can’t.

But neither can they neglect or ignore any of their other statutory duties, of which there is a vast number.

So the only things they can do are to cut deep into non-statutory spending, and you will find most did that years ago, and play a game of plate-spinning with their statutory duties, during which some plates get either dropped altogether, or allowed to spin-down to dangerously low revolutions.

Bedtime background reading on the subject, pre-covid unfortunately, because covid has highlighted some of the issues even more, Especially in adult social care, where local authority problems turn into “bed blocking” in the NHS. https://researchbriefings.files.parliam ... 9-0006.pdf

[mjr]

but I don't remember anything which says a traffic authority (?) can neglect the repair of its roads through budgetary constraints

Spot on; they can’t.

Oh yes they can! (Is it panto season already?) And they do, but if I recall correctly and as thirdcrank summarises, they do risk being found legally liable (at least partly) for the results of any crashes resulting from a known defect left unrepaired longer than their asset management plan says (or longer than a reasonable plan would say), so they're basically betting that the expected loss (a low probability of being sued multiplied by the amount that would be paid out) is cheaper than doing the repair sooner.

As others have said, this is current Tory practice for years now, where it's all about money and who cares if people get avoidably injured.

[mjr]

The large organisation failing us is central government, local government can only spread its meagre resources thinly.

This is such an important point. And it is worth repeating every time that we talk about road maintenance and condition. (And the numbers are readily available to support it.)

They are far from the only organisation failing us. Both central and local government are also failing to manage vehicle numbers, weights and sizes, or even tax them appropriately for the damage they do, resulting in unsustainable damage to road surfaces.

It's even more absurd in some areas, with county councils or combined authorities trying to do the right things with modal filters, park and rides, bus partnerships and so on, but being blocked by borough/district councils that own a lot of central car parks which raise a lot of income with only part of the costs falling on the borough/district council. That is a systemic perversity which either national or borough/district government could address but neither have, with national passing the buck to a CoCo/CA level that doesn't have the power to solve it.

[thirdcrank]

On a previous thread an (irritated?) highwayman posted to point out that without the s 58 special defence they would have to inspect every road every half hour. So, a reasonable inspection regime offers a defence against an action for negligence eg if somebody has a pothole-related crash and is injured. That is different to a case where a road defect is reported - following routine inspection or by a third party - when a decision to delay action can only be based on things like the typical usage of that road. In layman's terms, can it be safely left for the next planned work? Otherwise, all defects no matter how serious could be left for the next routine maintenance.

[Nearholmer]

Oh yes they can! (Is it panto season already?) And they do

Maybe you didn’t read to the end of what I wrote in that post.

I think we are both saying exactly the same thing using different words.

It’s all part of the fantasy “have it both ways” dream that the electorate has been sold: you can have low taxes (national and local!), and at the same time you can have good public services, because we can “drive all the inefficiency out of the public sector”.

It is a fantasy (or lie, if you will) because the public sector is nothing like the money-wasting-scam that the right likes to pretend it is.

We’ve now even got the IMF shouting from the sidelines telling us it’s a fantasy, which is quite something.

[simonineaston]

Back well over a decade ago, I had experience of ways of working that seemed to be doing the trick. Around near me, apps were available that allowed the user to report all sorts of things to the local council - anti-social neighbours, abandoned cars - and dangerous potholes yadda yadda. The phone geo-tagged the issue and you could upload photos. This system, when I used it, seemd to work like a dream.
Then the unregulated bankers took too many risks, due to their unstoppable greed and the neoliberals took their usual view ie private profit, but public bail-outs and a major loser was local councils... as if it was somehow all their fault. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I suppose hard-nosed commentators may observe that as thou shalt sew, so shall you reap.

[fastpedaller]

I'd believe the local government were short of money to fund projects (be they child care, libraries, highways or whatever) if they didn't then make senior staff 'redundant' giving each of them a multiple of some 10x the payout that a private-sector individual would be awarded!

[mjr]

I'd believe the local government were short of money to fund projects (be they child care, libraries, highways or whatever) if they didn't then make senior staff 'redundant' giving each of them a multiple of some 10x the payout that a private-sector individual would be awarded!

Maybe the shortage of money means local government can't afford or won't pay for good-enough negotiators to avoid making bad contracts, whereas it's worth the workers or their unions hiring good negotiators if they can get more than a 10x boost to the final payout?

Most unions are probably much bigger than councils, so can attract better negotiators. Even worse, some councils have outsourced HR and I bet the outsourcing contracts don't reward them accurately for negotiation outcomes like that, partly because councils probably don't have good-enough negotiators to get it accurately in the contracts, which seems a bit of a self-perpetuating problem.