Lib Dems call for better standard of Highway Repairs across Surrey

Councillor Stephen Cooksey (Dorking and the Holmwoods), the Liberal Democrat Environment and Transport Spokesperson on Surrey County Council, has today called upon the county's Conservative administration to: "take more seriously, the problems that have beset the current highways contracts and to take urgent action to deal with them".

Proposing a motion to Surrey County Council's meeting of Full Council, Stephen Cooksey said: "When new contracts were agreed, councillors were given a range of assurances about improved performance, many of which have not materialised. The main areas of underperformance lie in processing the smaller schemes that are very important to all councillors in carrying out their responsibilities for ensuring the safety of our residents. These are projects that should be dealt with quickly, as a matter of course.

In 2010 Surrey was named, in a survey carried out by Kia cars, as the worst county in England for potholes, and with an officially logged total of 1,998, it was well over twice as bad as Hampshire which claimed second position in the table with 892. The rapid repair of safety defects, such as potholes, was a primary objective of the current contract and whilst performance both in dealing with emergency repairs and permanent repairs has improved, the projected targets have not been met, and the repair of many defects takes very much longer than the originally agreed timescales.

"In 2010-2011, the last year in which confirmed figures have been made available, Surrey County Council paid out £418,824 in 964 compensation claims for damage to vehicles caused by road defects, such as potholes, figures that should emphasise to the administration that defect repair is a major priority.

"Communications between Surrey Highways, the contractors and residents are an equally important problem. Communications between residents and contractors have resulted in recent incidents in which residents have been wrongly informed that work will be carried out over a given period of time, often by large information signs erected on lampposts. However when, for whatever reason, this has not happened, residents have not been informed about changes and the work has been undertaken at different times. That is both inconvenient and unacceptable. Then there are mis-communications between contractors resulting in cases such as the one reported recently in Mole Valley, when just three weeks after new white lines had been painted on a road, they were covered by a new surface dressing. Such incidents make residents lose whatever confidence in the system that they might still have.

"And there still appears to be a large black hole into which requests for action and complaints from residents fall, never to re-appear. Many residents complain about contacting the Council about a Highways issue, and sometimes even being given a registration number, but never hearing anything more and never seeing any result.

"Surrey residents deserve better, and that is why this motion is calling on the Cabinet member for Environment and Transport and the Leader to take cognisance of the real situation on the ground, and to take urgent action to deal with these issues now, rather than await another report to confirm that such action is necessary."

Will Forster (Woking South), who seconded the motion, said:

"In his statement to Council the Leader didn't mention Highways at all, which shows how little importance he places on it.

"I now expect Conservative councillors to go back to their residents and say how wonderful Surrey's highway repairs are."

Several Liberal Democrat Surrey County Councillors spoke in the debate highlighting problems in their own areas.

Diana Smith (Knaphill) said:

"On 5 November last year one of my residents was walking to a Fireworks celebration, and tripped in a deep pothole as she was crossing a side-road. She got emergency treatment at the local NHS walk-in centre, and fortunately was not seriously hurt. More than five months on from my resident's accident this pothole was repaired. It should have been straightforward to get this trip hazard made safe in a timely way - the process simply failed to deliver, in a way that our residents find bizarre and unacceptable.

"Another example is the rising bollards for the bus gate in Knaphill. These were down - out of action - for fifteen months out of thirty-six in the last three years.

There is no physical reason for it to be like this, nor is it solely a matter of money. These are process problems that are known, and it's time the Leader got together with his Cabinet Member and senior staff to sort them."

Colin Taylor (Epsom & Ewell South West) said:

"In my division a short length of Christ Church Mount had a dozen potholes repaired earlier this year, one at a time. It has a dozen again now, some next to the old ones, some in the same places. Worple Road has had a local repair, which stops just short of a large pothole in the middle of a junction. I could go on."

Commenting after the meeting with further examples:

John Orrick (Caterham Hill) said:

"Residents in Ninhams Road were given a notice that their road would be closed for resurfacing last August. Promises were frequently made, and broken. Eventually the work was done in February, with no effective notice."

Hazel Watson (Dorking Hills) said:

"There have been unacceptable delays in carrying out repairs to potholes, replacing signs and unblocking drains. For example, there has been a failure to resolve the flooding at the Deepdene roundabout in Dorking, it took over a year to replace missing signs in Headley and significant delays in repairing potholes in Coldharbour Lane between Dorking and Coldharbour."

Fiona White (Guildford West) said:

"There have been some major road repairs carried out in my division, Guildford West, but already potholes and cracking are happening in the new surfaces. This standard of work is simply not acceptable and having to keep going back to the same roads costs more in the long run."

Peter Lambell (Reigate Central) said:

"A resident in my division, Reigate Central, recently reported a pavement pothole using the online system after suffering a nasty fall. The incident was closed after 2 weeks with no explanation provided online or to the resident. On chasing this I discovered that the condition of the pavement was deemed to be satisfactory and no action was taken. At the very least, some explanation should have been recorded and communicated to the resident rather than leaving it for a Member to chase up.

"Signs were placed in my own road, Flanchford Road, in early April, warning that the road would be closed for resurfacing that week. This was also communicated in the Members bulletin. The road was not resurfaced until a month later!"

Ian Beardsmore (Sunbury Common & Ashford Common) said:

I suppose I should welcome Surrey Conservatives admitting at last that the previous contract was a failure. Why has it taken them so long? Liberal Democrats told them four years ago it was failing. Mistakes are still happening. For example, why did they paint yellow lines on Sunbury Cross with the wrong paint, that quickly wore out, and having realised this, why did it take them so long to replace them?

NOTES:

1) Text of Stephen Cooksey's motion to Council:

Mr Stephen Cooksey (Dorking and the Holmwoods) to move under Standing Order 11 as follows:

'This Council notes that there have been delays in meeting the timescales set by the County Council in:

i) permanently repairing highway defects
ii) repairing highway safety defects
iii) replacing items such as man hole covers and signs.

This Council further notes that there has been a lack of communication to residents and members advising them when a defect is to be and has been repaired.

Council calls upon the Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment together with the Leader to take urgent action to ensure that Surrey's highways network is brought up to a standard that Surrey's Council Taxpayers would rightly expect to ensure the safety of highway users, the protection of their vehicles and a reduction in the cost of highways insurance claims against the County Council.'

2) Full text of Stephen Cooksey's speech:

SURREY COUNTY COUNCIL MEETING - 12 JUNE 2012

SPEECH BY COUNTY COUNCILLOR STEPHEN COOKSEY PROPOSING CALLING FOR A BETTER STANDARD OF HIGHWAY REPAIRS

'I rise to move the motion set out in my name on the agenda.

The reason for proposing this motion is to encourage the administration to take more seriously, the problems that have beset the current highways contracts and to take urgent action to deal with them.

Let me say, to begin with, that the current contracts have, for the most part, proved to be a significant improvement on the previous contracts. However, a major improvement should not have been difficult to achieve, given the well documented failures of the previous SHIP contracts. On the positive side, the May Gurney contract has performed well on major and medium sized schemes for road repair and surface renewal, and it is important to acknowledge that.

I also acknowledge that the administration has allocated more funding for dealing with highways issues including the additional £2 million from the proceeds of the Council Tax increase that was imposed earlier this year. Additional funding is always welcome, even if it is a drop in the ocean, given the highways maintenance and assets backlog of over £600 million of required investment that is needed in order to bring theSurreyhighways infrastructure back to an acceptable standard.

However, when the new contracts were agreed, Members were given a range of assurances about improved performance, many of which have not materialised. The main areas of underperformance lie in processing the smaller schemes that are very important to all Members in carrying out their responsibilities for ensuring the safety of our residents. These are projects that should be dealt with quickly, as a matter of course, and where performance criteria were highlighted as an important element of the agreed contract conditions.

I have raised this issue whenever the opportunity has arisen at the Environment and Transport Select Committee, and on every occasion members from all sides have expressed concern and frustration at the inability of the highways service to deal effectively with small projects. Most members have concerns about, for example, the time that is taken to repair or replace broken or inadequate road signs, damaged traffic islands, stolen manhole covers, road bollards and other highways furniture that was originally provided to allay safety concerns. Add to that the difficulties that many members have faced in trying to have gullies cleaned, trees pollarded and vegetation cleared. Most of these are very local matters, for which Local Committees carry some responsibility, but often local highways officers are every bit as frustrated as Members when time after time the projects are identified and contractors fail to carry out the work in an acceptable timeframe.

In 2010 Surrey was named, in a survey carried out by Kia cars, as the worst county in England for potholes, and with an officially logged total of 1,998, it was well over twice as bad as Hampshire which claimed second position in the table with 892. The rapid repair of safety defects, such as potholes, was a primary objective of the current contract and whilst performance both in dealing with emergency repairs and permanent repairs has improved, the projected targets have not been met, and the repair of many defects takes very much longer than the originally agreed timescales. The report on the performance of the May Gurney contract that was considered by Environment and Transport Committee on 12 January indicated that in the first six months of the contract only 70% of emergency defects had been permanently repaired in the stipulated 28 days. We don't know whether this performance has improved or deteriorated in the succeeding six months but local evidence suggests the latter. In 2010-2011, the last year in which confirmed figures have been made available, Surrey County Council paid out £418,824 in 964 compensation claims for damage to vehicles caused by road defects, such as potholes, figures that should emphasise to the administration that defect repair is a major priority.

Communications between Surrey Highways, the contractors and residents are an equally important problem. Communications between residents and contractors have resulted in recent incidents in which residents have been wrongly informed that work will be carried out over a given period of time, often by large information signs erected on lampposts. However when, for whatever reason, this has not happened, residents have not been informed about changes and the work has been undertaken at different times. That is both inconvenient and unacceptable. Then there are mis-communications between contractors resulting in cases such as the one reported recently inMoleValley, when just three weeks after new white lines had been painted on a road, they were covered by a new surface dressing. Such incidents make residents lose whatever confidence in the system that they might still have.

And there still appears to be a large black hole into which requests for action and complaints from residents fall, never to re-appear. Many residents complain about contacting the Council about a Highways issue, and sometimes even being given a registration number, but never hearing anything more and never seeing any result.

All of this leads to uncertainty on the part of both residents and Members about the validity of information that they receive from Surrey Highways.

A few brief extracts from the minutes of the 12 January meeting of the Environment and Transport Select Committee which discussed the report that I referred to earlier include the following statements which very much confirm what I have been saying :-

"Officers were congratulated for the considerable improvement made to major schemes. However the view was expressed that for smaller schemes the situation had not improved"

"It was suggested that the perceived lack of faith among local communities with the new highways contract was the result of smaller issues not being addressed"

"Problems this year had been caused by poor communication and notification"

"The view was expressed that the structure of May Gurney's relationship with Surrey County Council was not clear"

"The Chairman expressed concern at the fact that complaints are received at the County Council's Contact centre and it is not clear how these are passed on to May Gurney"

"It was stated that feedback to members from residents regarding the new contract had been mixed with complaints received as a result of issues not being addressed"

I am aware that a report covering the whole first year of the contracts will be considered at some time later this year, but these issues are of real significance to Members and local residents, and the lack of resolution continues to undermine confidence in the ability of Surrey highways to deliver what was promised, with such flourish, when the new contracts were launched.

In truth, Surrey residents deserve better, and that is why this motion is calling on the Cabinet member for Environment and Transport and the Leader to take cognisance of the real situation on the ground, and to take urgent action to deal with these issues now, rather than await another report to confirm that such action is necessary.'