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Somerset County Council is the Highway Authority for the public highways network in Somerset (excluding the M5 Motorway, the A303 and A36 Trunk Roads; these are dealt with by the Highways Agency).
The County Council is responsible for repairing and maintaining the public highways network in Somerset. Somerset Highways, through a partnering contract, delivers the day to day management and maintenance of the network within the resources available. The County Council mainly provides the highway maintenance budget, although the Government provides support for the structural maintenance of 'principal' roads through the Local Transport Plan bidding process.
The major tasks which form part of this service are highway inspections, surface dressing, resurfacing, patching, general purpose maintenance, maintaining road records and network management. The latter refers to the job of planning and co-ordination of roadworks. Other key tasks are temporary road closures, pavements, drainage, verge cutting, repairing potholes and winter gritting/snow clearance, which are covered within separate sections within this guide.
We have a duty to maintain the highway under Section 40 of the Highways Act 1980. Highway inspections are carried out to identify safety defects, the frequency of these will depend on the usage of the road or footway.
Safety defects can include, but are not limited to: Potholes, Road edge deterioration, Vegetation obstructing the highway or affecting visibility, defective road signs or markings.
When problems are noticed or reported, defects are assessed and built into maintenance programmes.
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