Future council road repairs will be improved so they are “longer term and longer lasting”
Wrexham needs ‘in excess of £45m’ to bring local highways up to standard, the Lead Councillor responsible has said.
Lead Member for the Environment, Cllr Hugh Jones, detailed the benefits to his department in the proposed budget passed by the Executive Board on Tuesday, but started with a wider comment, ” This budget, as the leader of the council has indicated, it focuses on those areas which all of us as members see great pressures – children’s social care, investing in the future of our young people, in Adult Social Care. Indeed, in my own area, in particular in highways and I will say there’s a bit more about that later.
“In terms of the priorities for this council, it demonstrates that we are a caring council, and the council is investing soundly in terms of maintaining our services and improving our services to the public, notwithstanding the difficult economic times that we are in.”
The budget notes an “investment in Highways Maintenance & Resurfacing” at £300k , plus an annual capital provision of £700k is to be included in the Highways Structural Maintenance Capital Programme from 2023/24 onwards.
Cllr Jones went on to detail the plans, “All members will know, as will the public know, we need to invest in our aging highway structure.
“We probably need in excess of 45 million pounds to bring it up to the standard that needs to be brought up to, this is a start and it’s a step in the right direction over the next few years.
“What we want to do is we want to look at achieving a longer term repair, because a lot of the repairs that we’ve been carrying out are basically of a temporary nature, responding to emergencies.
“We need to try and improve our planning and have a planned reactive maintenance system which we will be working on and putting in place.
“Needless to say, this money is particularly welcome because it comes at a time when the winter weather, as we all know and we can see it with our eyes, has played havoc with our road surfaces and our footpaths.
“I can reassure members that we will work to do our very best to remedy those problems. But, we will also work to improve the nature of the repairs so that they are longer term and longer lasting.
“This money, both mixture of capital and revenue, will enable us to invest in both equipment and manpower to enable us to achieve those objectives.”
Top pic: Archive image of a pothole that was repaired.
Spotted something? Got a story? Email [email protected]