Somerset Council is planning to spend up to £5m over the next 3 years to smarten up Somerset’s roads, pavements and cycleways.
Current road maintenance programmes focus on safety critical works which can mean lower priority issues like faded road markings, broken signs and overgrown hedges have been left unresolved, often for many years.
New spending proposals will deliver a range of visible improvements like clearing more drains and gullies, fixing and cleaning road signs, repainting faded road markings, collecting litter, and clearing overgrown vegetation, particularly near to walking and cycling routes.
Improvements will also be made to the council’s public reporting system, to make it even easier for residents to highlight any issues on the roads.
Cllr Bill Revans, Leader of Somerset Council, said:
As a listening council we know the public want us to do much more than simply keep our roads safe, and we want to see improvements across our council area.
We will continue to prioritise pothole repairs and are working hard to clear the backlog caused by the many weeks of wet weather and flooding we have experienced this winter. We plan to allocate additional funds to tackle the backlog of potholes if we need to.
Now that we have next year’s budget proposals ready for Full Council next week, we can also look forward to bringing forward our proposals to increase spending in a much needed programme of additional drain and gully clearance, improving signage and lining on our A and B roads, starting to make sure cycle lanes are clear of overgrowth, and improving our public reporting system.
£2m has already been identified from uncommitted funds and the balance of funding for subsequent years will be identified over the coming year.
Since the start of the year, Somerset Council has received 16,332 reports about defects on the roads, compared to 4,417 for the same period last year. In response the Council has more than doubled the number of teams dealing with the damage, deploying extra equipment and using alternative materials to try to speed up the process. As of 20 February 4,577 potholes have been fixed by 35 teams dedicated to this work.
If you spot a problem on the road, please help by visiting the Council’s Report a problem on the road page. It takes a few minutes and goes straight to the team who will visit and assess the defect. Depending on severity, it will be fixed on a timescale of:
- 2 hours,
- 24 hours,
- 7 days or
- 28 days for non-emergency repairs.
