roshathorn

Fixing our roads

  1. Historically all roads were resurfaced on a cyclical scheme after a certain period of years.   When we stopped seeing our roads regularly resurfaced today’s situation became inevitable.  Fundamentally the majority of our roads or stretches of our roads are all failing, at the same time.
  2. Fixing pot holes is not the solution that is a consequence of historic decisions to underfund our highways network across decades. Properly maintaining our roads is how we stop pot holes occurring in the first place.
  3. Our highways are getting historic levels of use.  When I grew up roads were regularly resurfaced but since then the level of usage and associated wear has risen exponentially.  The amount we drive contributes to how quickly our roads fail and as a nation we drive a lot including for home deliveries.
  4. There are a lot of attacks on the quality of pot hole repairs.  Some repairs are expected to be temporary, at peak pot hole season (Jan-March) there is simply not enough equipment to fix all the pot holes to the right standard, so a temporary fix may be done followed by the proper job a few weeks later.   Fundamentally however the issue is that many pot hole repairs are doing work on a stretch of road that is already failing.   So when you fix one pot hole the next bit of road fails quickly.
  5. The county council is changing the policy to prioritise resurfacing an area of road where there are multiple pot holes rather than just a patchwork of pot hole fixed but even that takes time as you have to get the policy right.
  6. Roads should be resurfaced every 10-12 years for major roads and 10-20 for non major roads.  So if you do not have budget to resurface 5-10 percent of your roads every year you are storing up trouble. 
  7. The County Council has found around £20m every year of additional money to invest in roads ie the vast majority of discretionary spend at the county council goes into roads maintenance but that is simply not enough.
  8. In 2024/25 the Council invested £58 million in the highway network. This enabled us to resurface 56 kilometres of our roads and to surface treat a further 92km out of a total 4519 km.  
  9. If you want more money in highways maintenance it is not cycleways you need to stop building as the county council does not have control over that money it is public libraries you need to close and sell off or other work around supporting the most deprived areas of the county. There are no easy answers to this just difficult choices.
  10. We also have soil affected fen roads, where more extreme weather is doing structural damage which requires a complete rebuild of the roads.  Other counties do not have this issue. This is a massive financial drain on our maintenance budget. The cost of fixing this is at least £500million and needs a government allocation.
  11. This financial year about £30million was spent on resurfacing activities for roads and £7m for footways and cycleways.  The council has not forgotten pavements but what we see here in Histon and Impington is repeated across the entire county.  There isn’t enough money so it is spread extremely thinly.
  12. Anyone who tells you they can cut taxes and improve our roads is lying.   Anyone who tells you they can tax the billionaires and they will pay for our roads is lying.  There is no easy fix. It is very expensive and to fix it requires significantly higher tax rises, way above inflation or the alternative is to impose drastic cuts on other services. .
  13. The money for fixing our roads requires central government allocation, either by allocating more money to highways or removing the cost of adult social care from local authorities. the scale of the problem is just too large to be fixed within the county.  Very crudely if you look at road resurfacing if we get 92km resurfaced for £30 million I estimate we need at least another £50million annually (to rise in line with inflation). Even with that rise in funding it would take another 20 years before roads were where they should be.
  14. Current annual allocation from government is around £30million we need £80 million plus £500 million to fix the soil affected fen roads.

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