Extra crews tackling highway troubles

Since May, 13 new highways crews have been working on Lincolnshire’s roads to identify and rectify even more problems.

The council invested £3.9m in the new crews in April to carry out more maintenance jobs that the council might normally struggle to complete, and allow existing maintenance gangs to focus on serious and dangerous defects – including potholes.

These 13 extra crews work in four different ways:

• Six community gangs work across our electoral divisions, fixing minor faults reported by local councillors or highways officers, or other problems that they come across. This could include cleaning and repairing signage, filling grit bins, renewing road linings and much more.
• Four new civil gangs carry out bigger jobs like footway and kerb repairs, small roadway repairs, or drainage works.
• Two new drainage crews investigate drainage problems using specialist camera equipment, and are able to fix most issues there and then, and pass bigger jobs on to the four civil crews.
• A new five-person hand patching crew, which bridges the gap between the small-scale fixing work done by the other crews, and the large-scale machine patching jobs that are done as part of our annual programme of works.

Since hitting the roads in May, the new crews have completed 776 jobs reported to them by councillors and officers, and fixed a further 5,800 faults that they have discovered themselves on their rounds.

Cllr Richard Davies, executive member for highways, said: “With five months still to go before the end of the financial year, these crews have really shown their worth with the work they’ve already completed.

“These extra community gangs are tackling the smaller and cosmetic problems that mean so much to residents, but that we can often find it difficult to get to as we focus on priority safety jobs.

“Everything from weedy pathways and overhanging bushes, to broken signage, damaged guardrails and small annoying road defects, these new crews are finding and fixing it.

“Our 5,500 mile road network takes some looking after, but we do absolutely everything we can to maintain and improve our roads. Earlier this year, the AA recognised Lincolnshire County Council as one of the country’s ‘big fixers’ when it comes to highways repairs, carrying out more work on our roads than almost every other local authority.

“Having said that, we know our roads aren’t perfect. So if you spot a problem, report it to us so we can do something about it. Now that coronavirus restrictions have tightened again across the country, and many of us are staying at home to slow the spread of the virus, our maintenance gangs are still working – safely – to improve Lincolnshire’s roads.”

You can report problems with the roads through www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/faultreporting.

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