We all hate potholes and they are particularly dangerous if you are a cyclist. Last month North Somerset Council was awarded £5.9 million for 2021/2022 from the Government's pothole and road maintenance fund. This will really help to get more urgent repairs done, but it is nowhere near enough and is a lower than the amount we received last year.
On top of this the council has allocated a further £1.25 million of its own funds (from your council tax) to repair the network. Sadly this is still not enough to bring all roads up to a decent standard and to stop potholes forming in the first place. The last Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (Alarm) Survey in 2020, reported that it would now cost £11.14 billion to bring England's roads up to scratch – and the Government has provided just £500 million over the whole country for the coming year.
North Somerset Council tries to top up this budget as much as we can each year, but only the Government can deliver the step change we need. At the moment we are undertaking a detailed piece of work to ascertain the minimum we really need to be spending each year.
Over the last few months we have seen some work locally
with the resurfacing of both Rayens Cross Road and Raymore Rise in Long Ashton
and work on Wraxall Hill
to improve the junction at the top and drainage at the bottom.
You can report potholes
or damaged pavements on the councils website by clicking
here. Someone will then come and inspect (usually within 24 hours) and assess whether remedial work will be undertaken. For a pothole to be repaired it needs to meet certain criteria, the council sets this out as follows;
"For us to repair them, a pothole must be more than 4cm deep and 30cm across in the road, or deeper than 2cm and more than 15cm across on a pavement. A dangerous pothole is one in the road that exceeds these dimensions and is in a location likely to cause a vehicle to lose control."