West Sussex County Council investing £14.5 million to accelerate the repair of our county’s roads

The extremes in weather over the past year have led to a more rapid deterioration in the quality of parts of our county’s road network than we forecast, with the number of defects being reported to us nearly double those reported in the same period in 2022.

Over the past four years, the county council has received 15,800 reports about potholes on average per year. Within the first 5 months of 2023, we received 21,900 reports of potholes, and this number continues to grow. It’s a huge challenge.

At the same time, we face multiple other highways maintenance issues in addition to those related to changes in our climate. For example, we’re seeing increased use of our roads, heavier vehicles, and also structural weaknesses caused when utilities companies open up the carriageway to install or maintain their own infrastructure.

Utility companies have a legal right to dig up our roads in order to install new pipes and cables, or to maintain their existing ones. In general, these are companies that supply your water, gas, electricity and telecommunications. We must allow this to continue to ensure that West Sussex residents and businesses continue to benefit from up to date, reliable resources and we work hard to co-ordinate their work, although we can't force them to work together.

All we can do is to continue to prioritise the maintenance of the road system so minimum impact is felt by our residents in their day-to-day journeys. Most, if not all, of the country’s Local Authorities are in a similar situation to us, with the estimated one-time catch-up cost of repairing roads across England and Wales standing at £14.02 billion.

As part of the priorities in "Our Council Plan” we undertook to maintain our roads to enable a safe and effective transport option that offers choice, is convenient to use, enhances the environment and enables economic growth.

However, the current funding allocated by central government for highways maintenance in West Sussex, including the upkeep of highways assets such as bridges, footways and traffic signals, equates to only £5,000 per km and we must prioritise where we utilise our resources to those issues which could impact on safety.

Believe me when I say I fully appreciate the frustrations felt by those using our road network and the impact poor conditions have, not only to our journeys but also through the potential of vehicle damage when driving over defects which are waiting to be repaired. The county council will continue to do all it can to maintain our roads to as best a standard as possible with the limited funds we have.

I, and my counterparts in other local authorities, have written to the Government to explain the situation we’re facing and to request the additional funding we need to bring areas of our highways network out of disrepair as quickly as practical.

We are determined to address this issue for all who live, work, volunteer and visit our county, and have allocated a total boost of £14.5 million of funding for highways operations. This is made up of a £7 million increase in funds for road maintenance from the county council’s capital budget, £3 million allocated to the county by central government for pothole repairs and an additional exceptional one-off £4.5 million being allocated from this year’s budget for flood prevention and pothole repair.

This funding is being used to bring in extra manpower and equipment to be out on our county’s roads throughout the summer months, working their way through the backlog of repairs. We have also implemented a “right first time” approach for the contractors carrying out the work and additional auditing of the quality of repairs to ensure longevity.

In addition to our day-to-day funding for the coming year we also have plans for long term investment in our county. Over the next five years we plan to invest £110 million on highway maintenance and local transport improvements, plus £86 million on major road schemes through our five-year Capital Programme.

This week we have launched our “Better Roads” public engagement campaign, where we will be sharing regular updates on the progress being made across the county, providing information on the work that we’re carrying out and discussing the issues we face as we strive to improve our road network. Please sign-up to our free residents’ eNewsletter or follow us on our social media channels to ensure you keep up to date with our progress.

Remember that you can help us by reporting any new potholes you see on your travels this summer using our online form. Please provide as much detail as you can about the size and exact location to help us to respond accordingly. It’s an enormous challenge, but we’re tackling it head on.