WITH budgets stretched, Caerphilly Council will turn to planned road resurfacing this year, in a bid to reduce the number of emergency pothole repairs.
Current funding levels would allow each borough road to be resurfaced every 97 years on average, according to a new report.
It warns “the average renewal time for carriageways in the borough is far beyond the expected life of the roads”.
This will lead to more repair costs, “which will further deplete the planned maintenance budget and potentially result in an increase in claims”.
Ideally, the council would like an 80/20 split between planned maintenance and unexpected repair work – but this year is expecting to spend twice as much on the latter.
Cllr Chris Morgan, a cabinet member, warned the council’s environment committee of a “significant funding gap across local authorities, presenting ongoing risks to future service standards”.
He said the council was taking a “prioritised, risk-based approach” to preserving the borough’s roads, using “preventative maintenance techniques” including more cost-effective pothole repairs.
Earlier this year, the council said it had selected 25 roads across the borough for resurfacing works.
Opposition councillors have criticised previous patch-up works and called for the local authority to tackle the “menace” of potholes.
Speaking at the committee meeting, on Tuesday June 16, Cllr Judith Pritchard asked whether the highways budget was flexible enough to switch between planned maintenance and unexpected repairs.
“We don’t know what the weather’s going to be like, and it’s pretty important – some of these potholes are huge,” she said.
The council’s infrastructure director Clive Campbell agreed the number of new potholes couldn’t be predicted each year.
“One of the key points of investing in carriageway resurfacing… is that we target those areas where we will get the greatest benefit from resurfacing, and then reduce the number of potholes that occur,” he said.
“The issue with potholes is that you can repair them, but they keep popping [up] and need to be redone.”
Mr Campbell added: “We do have a statutory duty to respond to potholes – so while we have a budget set aside… we will respond to everything that requires responding to.”
