Call for review of Dudley Council's pothole policy following 'red rating'
Dudley’s highways chiefs have been defending their policy on potholes after a red rating in a government report.
The report, published by the Department of Transport on January 11, gave Dudley Council an overall amber rating for road maintenance but the authority was one of only 18 out of 154 highways authorities to get a red rating for best practice.
At a meeting of the council’s Communities and Growth Scrutiny Committee on January 21, Labour’s Cllr Parmjit Sahota called for an already planned winter maintenance review to be extended.
Cllr Sahota said: “The committee really needs to ask for a wider systematic review, we need detailed forensics on policies, procedures and processes and why increasing investment has not delivered.”
Cllr Simon Phipps, Dudley cabinet member for economy and infrastructure, said: “Preventative maintenance is one thing that, every single time the council does it, we get scores of complaints from councillors; then we get complaints for not doing enough preventative maintenance.”
Cllr Phipps explained preventive maintenance involves Surface Dressing, where a layer of stones are put on top of the road so the stones break up as traffic moves over them rather than the road surface underneath.
He added: “It’s messy, I’d rather not do it and concentrate on full blown resurfacing unfortunately we won’t be able to do that in all situations.
“We moved away from short-term reactive repairs towards longer term road resurfacing, it is going to take time to get that up to speed.”
Nick McGurk, Dudley’s group director for communities and growth, said: “We moved to more planned preventative measures, we have only done two years of that at this time. I don’t want to see any red ratings, we are constantly striving to improve.”
Cllr Phipps told councillors the borough is responsible for more than 700 miles of roads and added “It’s going to take time to get that up to speed”.
Cllr Sahota said: “We need to be looking wider than winter maintenance if we are going to respond to that report. That report is concerning, the red rating was for best practice, not reactive.”
