Council explains proactive approach to highways maintenance
Cheshire West and Chester Council Highways Service manages around 1,419 miles of road in the borough, enough to take you from Chester to Rome.
The Council uses preventative treatments on roads where possible, these are products and methods that help extend the life of the road, and get the greatest life from the road before more costly structural maintenance is needed.
The Council’s Leader, Councillor Louise Gittins said:
Our approach to highways maintenance is proactive rather than reactive to keep the borough’s road network in as best a condition as possible. It’s a robust asset management approach, which involves a systematic approach to managing road assets throughout their lifecycle. This approach is especially important on our major A road network, as preventative surface treatments take only a couple of days to complete (depending on how big the site is) before the road can be re-opened to traffic, whereas full resurfacing or structural repairs would mean that a road is closed for a far longer period of time.
Surface treatment works are predominantly completed in the summer months, as the products used are affected by both wet weather and temperature.
Surface dressing can only be applied in the dry and in the day time, as rain or moisture can cause the product to ‘fail’.
The Council’s current surface dressing programme is now complete and a new schedule of carriageway treatment, carriageway resurfacing and footway works will take place across the borough. More details are on the Council’s website.
Details of road closures can be found on Causeway one.network and alerts can be set up for your own local area, so you will be notified of any works happening near you or on your journey.
Cllr Gittins added:
The demands on our highway maintenance budget far outpaces the funding available to address the defects that occur, so difficult choices do need to be made about which roads are treated and when. Our Asset Management team produces a list of schemes to be completed in priority order based on a yearly survey of asset condition. Teams then work together to programme in these schemes to be completed in an organised and timely way.
More information on the Council’s Highways Asset Management Strategy is on the website.