Longer response times for potholes repairs: Surrey joins Northants

Surrey wants to increase the number of permanent repairs

Surrey wants to increase the number of permanent repairs

Surrey County Council has decided to take up to five days instead of 24 hours to repair safety defects on its road network in order to improve highways service productivity.

A report by Trevor Pugh, Surrey’s environment and infrastructure director, said that, while “a large proportion of safety defects have been repaired in 24 hours” by term contractor May Gurney since April 2011 and satisfaction has improved, “the short timescale for response means that there is no opportunity to properly plan repairs”.

The new policy is intended to reduce the number of temporary defect repairs and shorten travel times for the repairs gangs by allowing the grouping of a larger number of defects in each part of the highways network that they visit. The proposals have been endorsed by Surrey’s cabinet.

Surrey is departing from national advice contained in the code of practice on highway maintenance in adopting the new policy. The decision comes as Northamptonshire, the first authority to lengthen the response times for repairing safety defects to five days, revealed the policy had been a success.

Tony Ciaburro, Northamptonshire’s director of environment, development and transport, told LTT: “We have gone from having around 80% of repairs being temporary to 80% being permanent. That is evidence suggesting that response times need to be reviewed.”

 The DfT’s Potholes Review concluded that response times for defect repairs should be “based on local needs and an assessment of risk”. However, one year on from the review, most authorities have not revised their response times to depart from advice in the code, Well-Maintained Highways, that safety defects should be repaired within 24 hours. Although this advice is not mandatory, it is a consideration in legal actions against authorities.

The DfT is to start a revision  of the code later this month in response to the review. Steve Berry, the head of the DfT’s highways maintenance branch, told LTT: “There are areas of the code (including the standards) where the text could usefully be brought up to date.”

Berry said the survey would seek to establish what changes authorities believe are needed. He anticipated that the revision would take up to a year.

Ciaburro said it should be down to councils to decide how to strike the balance between reducing temporary repairs and responding in a reasonable amount of time.

Discuss this at LTT's Future of Highways Summit on the 18 June