The Conservative Administration at Suffolk County Council is allocating £10million of additional investment from its reserves into 2016’s programme of road surface dressing during the spring and summer months before September. This preventative maintenance work will help avoid potholes forming in future years on the roads that are treated by delivering approximately three million square metres of new surfacing; particularly focusing on rural roads across the county.
This intensive programme of work equates to delivering three times the usual amount of new surface dressing, and is equivalent to dressing 500km of road surface. To put that in perspective, Suffolk has around 6500km of road network so this year’s work will cover almost 10 per cent of the network. To carry out this work in the most effective manner, surface dressing will take place in the areas of the highest priority, based on the Council’s recently adopted asset management approach to highway infrastructure.
Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport at Suffolk County Council, Cllr James Finch said: “This year’s major investment is about giving ourselves the opportunity to get ahead with our maintenance schedule of works so we can make long term savings and maintain the network for longer, instead of having to carry out repeated short term patch repairs.
“Whilst this work takes place, there may be some short term pain in order to achieve a great deal of long term gain. Maintaining the quality of our roads and infrastructure across Suffolk is one of the Administration’s highest priorities and echoes the views and feedback that I regularly receive from residents.”
“This work is only one part of the continued investment we are making in Suffolk’s road network and infrastructure. Suffolk was recently given £1.38m of funding towards pothole repair and we are currently looking at how best to use this funding, with a particular focus on unclassified roads in the county.”