Councillor questions if road resurfacing and patching is done ‘fairly’ after compiling ‘league table’ of where work takes place

A councillor has sought ‘reassurance’ that there is a ‘fair’ programme of resurfacing and patching in Wrexham after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request shows the three groups that make up the council administration top the table for the number of jobs per member, by political grouping.

The data was requested from Wrexham Council in an FOI covers road resurfacing and patching work undertaken in years 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Gwersyllt North Councillor, Plaid Cymru’s Phil Rees, collated the data and produced an analysis on the 168 items.

In a detailed explainer Cllr Rees states 16 physical visits to locations were made to check out uncertain works, and where works involve more than one ward (23 items) then his analysis splits the work appropriately.

Due to the timescales political groupings have changed, as has Executive Board membership, so current standings are used for the information, similarly other quirks have been detailed, for example Wrexham has two member per some wards.

Some extra checking of the data has been carried out with Cllr Rees skeptical that the B5102 Minera Road (from Gwern Y Gaseg Rd to County Boundary) was ‘patched’ when it had a substantial stretch of re-surfacing work, likewise there’s a very long stretch of resurfacing work on the A495 near Bronington which was not shown in the FOI however an item listed for ‘patching’ and ‘A495 Ellesmere Road – Patch’ was.

Cllr Rees crunched the numbers to produce a ‘league table’ for resurfacing and patching works, noting that the 10 wards with an Executive Board Member (one of which is a 2-member ward), 9 are in the top half of the table for amount of work done with only Chirk South is in the bottom half.

A ‘league table’ of all councillors/wards and jobs-per-ward has also been calculated.

Of the 10 Wards with an Executive Board member (one of which is a 2-member ward), 9 are in the top half of the table for amount of work done. Only Chirk South is in the bottom half.

Executive Board members had an average of 4.61 jobs. Members in wards with no Executive Board Member had an average of 2.86 Similar picture on the larger Resurfacing jobs – 2.52 compared to 1.59

Executive Board members had an average of 4.61 jobs, whereas members in wards with no Executive Board Member had an average of 2.86.

The number of jobs per member, tabled by political grouping has also been produced. Work done in Conservative member wards has an average of 4.10, the all-member average is 3.23, and the average for Labour + Lib Dem + Non-aligned at 1.99.

Number of jobs per member, by political grouping

Cllr Rees said “Whether it’s on potholes, or on other council services like street-cleaning, residents deserve to know that services are allocated on the basis of need and priority, regardless of where that needs happen to be.”

“This research suggests that this isn’t always the case, and we need reassurances going forward that there’s a robust system in place to ensure fair play, and that each ward of the county gets equal consideration”.

We used this months media briefing to look for such reassurance, with three of the top eleven wards being represented by councillors at the brief. Unfortunately Executive Board members Cllr David A Bithell and Cllr Hugh Jones had to leave before the question. As Council Leader Mark Pritchard was left, we asked him if the stats showed a coincidence, good proactive ward councillors who got things done, terribly maintained roads in certain wards that needed works, longer roads in certain wards, or something else.

Cllr Pritchard noted he had not seen the figures ahead of answering the question, but said “I don’t see any concern. I think that the money is spent where it needs to be spent, whether that Executive Board members or elected members, it doesn’t matter to me.

“It is an operational decision, the officers go out and assess the status of the roads, and they decide where the money is spent. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked.”

“Let’s say for instance that there was a ward in Wrexham and they had four roads resurfaced, so be it. It should not matter where they are.”

“I know there has been discussions that money is spent in more Conservative wards, well Conservative wards are very rural wards, so there might be more roads. You might have a ward which is very small, and it’s got a very small amount of meterage and milage on the roads.”

“We do not decide whether roads are resurfaced, that decision is made to an operational process, and long may it continue.”

“I don’t know if this freedom information request has come in from a political party and just trying to make waves and cause problems. They shouldn’t be spending the money on FOIs, what they should be doing is spending their time lobbying for more money from the Welsh Government to resurface roads as we have a limited amount of money to be spent on roads.”

We had previously asked Wrexham Council how such work is prioritised by ward, and if there is any political bias to the process. As we guessed the answer to the latter would be a no, we asked if the the difference between groupings be explained, and likewise the stat that Exec Board wards have a much higher jobs average than non-Exec members?

Wrexham Council’s Darren Williams, Chief Officer, Environment and Technical said, “Our forward works programme is published annually on the Council’s web site and considers highway conditions across the County Borough. We do not allocate work on the basis of geographical wards, we allocate on a risk based approach in terms of need.

“Our reactive works are based on our Highways Safety Inspection policy which again is not a geographical basis but based on risk and includes road traffic volumes, road classifications, etc.”

The ‘forward works programme’ is a document that it appears Wrexham Council themselves are not avid readers of, as memorably in August 2019 a car park used predominantly by council staff and councillors had a full resurfacing, four months after we were told it would categorically not happen.

The video of those infamous works can be found below: