Richard Gibbs from Stone-in-Oxney sent us this picture from last week with a question drivers in Rye have been asking for months. Why do some potholes get repaired and others, often nearby, get ignored?
He says “East Sussex CC really excelled themselves last week by filling one pothole on Military Road near the landslip / Volker Stevin site / Starlock House and leaving adjacent holes. So the road remains dangerous and the costs go up as they will have to come back. Incompetence? Negligence?”
East Sussex County Council says it’s neither and all down to cost. “With more than 2,000 miles of highways to monitor and maintain we prioritise repairs to ensure that potholes which present the greatest risk are repaired as quickly as possible. Any adjacent defects that do not reach our published intervention levels at the time of repair continue to be monitored by our Highways stewards. Repairing all potholes and defects regardless of whether they are an immediate safety issue or not would cost about four times our current spend, which is considerably more resource than is available to us, and place an even greater burden on council taxpayers.”
ESCC’s statement continues. “Since 2020/21 we have spent £105 million on highways maintenance, despite Government funding of only £60 million. We have invested in a long term, planned programme of preventative maintenance through schemes such as resurfacing and surface dressing to stop potholes and other defects appearing in the first place.”
Richard Gibbs is not convinced. “The point in this instance is that the various other holes adjacent do pose a safety risk and are getting worse by the day. People keep swerving to avoid them which is not great either. They will have to be monitored and fixed soon which will inevitably cost more money.”
You can find out more on ESCC’s policy on pothole – and how to report them – on the council’s website www.eastsussexhighways.com.
Image Credits: Richard Gibbs .
This is a clear case of red tape and lack of common sense.
In my younger days, I spent a year in Australia on a limited work visa.
One of the jobs I did was with a contractor who carried out road maintenance for the local authority.
We stared the day by loading up a truck with a couple of tons of fresh tarmac and were told to drive out to all the local roads (covering different areas each day) and fill in any pot holes that we found. Mostly it would take us no more than 10 minutes to carry out a repair. Traffic was controlled by a Stop and Go lollipop.
It did not matter if it was big or small, we filled it. Better to stop them getting bigger than to waste money employing someone to go around with a clip board and writing a report about it.
Cut the C**p and get on with it !
I assume ESCC are probably working to achieve a target, K.P.Is Key Performance Indicators) in other words – bean counting or pothole counting in this case.
You report a pothole and assume they’ll do the adjacent ones but they don’t get counted, so doesn’t improve the K.P.I. and their statistics.
We have the same issue here in Crowborough and indeed, it is county wide. Having to revisit the same sites each time a pothole meets the criteria is inefficient and illogical and a waste of our tax. Totally disagree with the ESCC statement above outlining their reasoning.
In recent days Iden Parish Council has written to Highways ESCC about the appalling and at times dangerous state of the B2082 along the entire length of the road from the Peace and Plenty to the Kent border and beyond.
It is clear from the reply that there is no money to retarmac the entire road and, for the foreseeable future residents will have to continue to report the potholes as they occur
The only hope the Council received was that Highway’s engineers have been asked to draw up plans for the road, both for longer term maintenance as well as short term emergency interventions. However, they will just see what we can do, without any promises at this stage.
I am afraid the potholes sage will just go on and on and despite Government promises that more funding has been provided
Good news for the vehicle repair business but not for the hapless drivers who use this road regularly.
Lack of initiative meets bone-idleness. It’s clearly more economic to make one journey to fill several adjacent potholes than a series of separate visits. The main criteria seems to be the depth of hole, so wide, shallow damage – lethal to cyclists, especially in dark and wet – is ignored. Basically a system of corporate welfare for private road repair contractors.
Complete lack of common sense and ability to manage expenditure cost effectively because the likelihood is the person/s making decisions have never run a business/s. I am happy to be corrected.
The process for making decisions to repair a pothole/road is a total mess ( no different from many other counties) and is unlikely to change in the near future.
Sorry to say, we must pay more and grin and bear it.
East Sussex Highways & Balfour Beatty must have paid out huge amounts of money in compensation to motorists over the past two years. I myself have made one successful claim which was caused by a huge pothole in Hastings last year.
I know of others locally who have had huge repair bills to damaged tyres, wheels & suspension, not to mention claims for road traffic accidents directly caused by improperly maintained roads.
Make sure you pursue your clams. I realise East Sussex Highways will use every trick in the book to make putting in a claim as difficult as possible & also delaying payment of claims.
It is only by being an absolute pain in the butt that you will get any money back but keep up the pressure & threaten legal action if necessary.
I would be very interested to know just how much compensation ESCC has paid out through Balfour Beatty for pot hole damage accidents in East Sussex over the past year or so.
Maybe when ESCC realise how much of our public money they are bleeding away in paying out claims they might think again about employing a large company as slow, wasteful & utterly useless as Balfour Beatty.
I have no wander that the local governments are in such a financial mess.
To get anything done at a parish counsel level, they have to go ‘cap in hand’ to the District counsel , who then have to go County Counsel in order to get approval for and funding.
A ‘feasibility study’ has to be carried out and then ‘Risk Assessment’ and then an ‘Approved Contractor’ then provides a huge quotation for doing the job. They charge what they like because it’s tax payers money .
In reality, the cost of filling a pot hole is probably only 10% of the bureaucratic circus and consultant costs.
Creates well paid jobs and pays pensions I suppose.
Why don’t we get all those who receive Community Service as their sentence to a crime out wearing orange tabards repairing these potholes?
At the moment, I’m convinced it’s just one person responsible for the repairs as it takes an age to get anything done. A bit like any other bit of roadworks. Large areas coned off for days/weeks with very little action seen!!!
Why do we put up with it?
If only Norman Bakers review of April, 2012 was noted by contractors and those responsible for highway/road management.It seems a lot of red tape now exists to carry out any action. The wording of the contract forms the basis of what is expected.
There appears to be no clear plan in respect of how repairs are carried out, surely best to look at parish council areas, gain what is needed to be done there, when completed move to another, if several teams exist with the contractor, work could be done faster.
Yes, the plan has to include any emergency. If a plan existed, and the public informed, it would go a long way. I refer back to the “original” contract, which no doubt includes cost/budget but does it say how the work is going to be carried out? Maybe the County member responsible for highways, and the contracts awarded tell us what the plan and outcomes were expected?