Highway Maintenance General Objectives
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Routine highway maintenance covers repairs to footways (pavements), minor carriageway repairs (e.g. potholes), cleaning and minor repairs to street furniture. For example:
- cat's eyes and road studs;
- gully (grid) emptying (i.e. drains in road);
- grass cutting;
- minor footway and carriageway repairs;
- treatment of weeds;
- tree cutting;
- repairs to traffic signs;
- white lining; and
- winter maintenance (gritting).
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We inspect all our roads and footpaths on a regular basis to identify defects such as:
- potholes in the road of 2in (50mm) deep or greater;
- loose cat's eyes and road studs;
- loose kerbs and flagstones;
- footway trips of 1in (25mm) or greater (e.g. raised flag stones); and
- broken ironwork (e.g. manhole covers or gullies).
The staff of your Area Highways Team are always pleased to hear of any faults, as this helps them to solve problems more quickly and may prevent a minor problem developing into a more serious safety issue. These types of defects listed above will usually be repaired, or made safe, within 24 hours of the inspection being done.
We also do our best (within our financial constraints) to look after the underlying structure of the road, as opposed to the visible appearance of the surface. We do a range of technical surveys to find out when such work is necessary. We try to do these repairs before the foundations of the road fail completely as restoration work is very expensive. Repair techniques range from surface dressing (tar and chippings), which improves the skidding resistance of the surface and provides a waterproof covering for the underlying structure, through to complete reconstruction of the road.
Area Highways Teams will always consult with Town and Parish Councils when preparing programmes of work. Councils should tell us about their suggestions and priorities and these will be taken fully into consideration. All structural maintenance schemes across the whole of the County are assessed and prioritised on a needs basis. The number of schemes which can be funded in any year depends upon the available budget. |
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