The most appalling and unprecedented winter weather conditions in living memory have led to a nationwide road problem. Central government have given additional winter support to East Sussex to fill potholes (£2.36m).
Inevitably, winter conditions require temporary solutions which need further work as drier weather emerges.
The patching programme, which delivers more permanent improvements to the road surface, will gain greater momentum from May onwards.
In 2022, as a centrepiece of the Conservative-run County Council budget, and supported by prudent management of our finances, we raised our ten year road maintenance spending plans by £31 million.
An additional £5.8 million was also allocated to patching, pavements and signs. The Lib Dems, Greens and Labour refused to support that budget.
In 2021/22, residents reported 13,081 potholes. County’s intervention criteria requires repair of potholes depending on severity and criticality within 2 hours, 5 days, or 28 days. Highways repaired over 24,000 potholes - 18,000 on the roads and 6,000 on pavements - in 2021/22 - 97% in the correct time period. The average time to repair a pothole across the network - 2,000 miles of road - was 10.5 days.
The winter weather has been challenging and this has required some quick-fix fills which need follow up work as conditions improve.
The assumption that opposition parties can do a better job in such challenged circumstances is not borne out by national data for 2021/22. The average Conservative council filled 16,250 potholes, compared with Lib Dem and Labour-run councils, who on average filled 8,737 and 5,417 respectively. In this light, the record of Conservative-run East Sussex compares quite favourably.
County’s highways contractor is being replaced this coming month.
East Sussex plans to spend even more in coming years on highways as finances permit. We look forward to the new contractor bringing the roads back to the standards that we and our residents rightly expect.
