Council's pothole repairing time in line with other local authorities
West Berkshire Council's response time to the most urgent potholes is two hours
WEST Berkshire Council’s aim of repairing the district’s most severe potholes within two hours mirrors that of most other local authorities.
A Freedom of Information request conducted by the RAC Foundation asked 190 of the 207 local highway authorities in Britain about how and when councils repair roads.
The motoring charity found that the quickest-acting councils in the UK aim to fill in the most severe potholes in their roads within minutes.
Cumbria, Flintshire and South Lanarkshire councils all try to act “immediately” to sort out defects.
The most common response time to the most urgent problems is two hours, with 79 councils – including West Berkshire – looking to patch up the road within this period.
Less urgent ruts throughout the district can take anywhere between 24 hours and 38 days to be filled in.
Elsewhere in Berkshire, Slough Borough Council and Bracknell Forest Council aim to respond to severe potholes in just 30 minutes.
But it takes Reading Borough Council and Windsor and Maidenhead Councils up to three hours to repair a serious hole in the road.
The RAC said response times to the most serious defects will be influenced by how many miles of road a council has to manage and the geographical size of the council area.
Analysis shows that local highway authorities across the country are increasingly adopting the ‘risk-based’ approach to fixing road defects.
This means that not only will the size – width and depth – of a pothole be taken into account, but also the type of road it is on, the volume of traffic that road carries and the mix of road users.
Most authorities still set minimum investigation levels – based on depth and width measurements – below which they won’t assess potholes, nor assign response times based on the dangers they pose.
West Berkshire Council is one of 26 local highway authorities which only repair potholes if they are deeper than 50mm (5cm) and measure 300mm (30cm) wide.
This is contrary to more than half (56 per cent) of local highway authorities in the country that fill in potholes if they have a depth of 40mm (4cm) or above.
RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding said: “It is understandable that large rural authorities set themselves longer response times, simply as a result of having to travel further to effect repairs, but motorists might still be surprised to see such a wide variation across the country.
“Those particularly vulnerable to potholes – cyclists and motorcyclists – might ask whether the speed of pothole investigation should be based solely on the risk to users.”
In December, West Berkshire Council received a £2m grant from the Department of Transport to smooth over potholes following the harsh ‘Beast from the East’ winter, which took its toll on the district’s roads last year.
In 2018, the local authority invested £3.6m on resurfacing and a further £1.06m on other road repairs to maintain the district’s 1,292km road network.
All road-related problems can be reported to the council directly by visiting www.westberks.gov.uk/reportaproblem
