Happy New Year!
I wanted to start the year with a Highways update
The volatile winter weather has taken an inevitable and severe toll on our road network. First, torrential rain in November (the wettest on record), freezing conditions in early December (one of the coldest divergences in north west European temperatures versus the 30 year average ), rapid thaw, followed by further torrential rain and flooding. Over 100mm of rain fell locally in December.
Since being re-elected in May 2021, your Conservative-run County Council has raised the 10 year road maintenance budget by 15% (£31 million) and invested an extra £5.8 million in road patching, pavements, and safety. But nothing can deal instantaneously with what we have recently seen. We have 2,400 defects reported in the system across the county, around 1,800 are potholes which is about 1,000 over normal operating levels. Highways customer contacts have risen from 4.500 in December 2021 to around 8,000 this last December.
So, what is being done? Maintenance gangs were out over Christmas and New Year attending potholes, floods, and fallen trees. We’ve increased resources to deal with defects and potholes by 50%, with Highways teams and stewards working overtime and extended hours, including weekends, to inspect and process cases, prioritise and action works. We’ve deployed additional resources to deal with drainage and flooding problems, which are the second highest category of reports, covering 24 hours a day. We have 1,500 tonnes of additional salt on order and are continuing to refill gritting bins.
I’ve reported a significant number of potholes myself in London Road and Hempstead Lane in the last week which are in the process of being attended to, but like the rest of the County a lot of work needs to be carried out right across the town to deal with the weather damage. I would encourage all residents to report potholes on the Highways website in the normal manner (see highways guide on my website under “how I can help”), using the link below.
https://www.eastsussexhighways.com/report-a-problem/roads
* Chart courtesy of Javier Blas at Bloomberg
UPDATE: As of Jan 10th
East Sussex Highways have just over 2000 reported potholes in the system currently (approximately 1200 more than the seasonal average). County’s contractor has put additional resources onto the repair of potholes (17 gangs vs the usual 10) with gangs working extended hours during evenings and weekends. The have repaired over 700 since 3rd January.
The contractor is looking to bring in more gangs from subcontractors when they become available, but most of these resources are fully employed working on other ESCC work or employed on other business. In the interim, ESCC highways are diverting resources from other activities such as the filling of grit bins and footway works to support road repair efforts; hopefully these will only be temporary resource diversions.
Please continue to report potholes so that they can be added to the list. Highways can only repair those potholes that they know about, and with over 2,000 miles of road for the Highways Stewards to monitor and service these will in all probability be picked up more speedily if we all report them as they develop.
Highways don’t repair every pothole that is reported; only those that meet County’s published ‘intervention’ criteria. Those criteria are described in the Guide to Highways on the East Sussex Highways website (link above). Those potholes that meet the criteria for repair will be repaired within 2 hours, 5 days, or 28 days depending on the size of the pothole, its location and type of road.
Where the Highways Steward judges that a pothole does not meet the prescribed criteria for repair, the Steward can refer a particular pothole, cluster of potholes or stretch of road for inclusion in our patching programme to which we devoted increased funding in our February 2022 budget. As of the end of November Highways have completed nearly 800 patches on some 400 roads, with patching to complete at another 100 sites before the end of the financial year.
