What additional funds have been received?    

      Following the severe wet winter of 2013/14, additional funding has been allocated through the Department for Transport from Central Government.  The funding is to help address the increased deterioration of the highway network caused by the severe winter weather. 

Two elements of funding have been allocated to Bath & North East Somerset as follows:

·   Funding of £23,459 from the Severe Weather Recovery Scheme 

·   In March 2014, the Secretary of State announced that the Department for Transport was making £140 million available to local authorities in England to help repair damage to the local road network caused by the recent severe weather. The amount allocated to Bath & North East Somerset was identified as £417,931.

What we intend to do with it?

Like many Highway Authorities across England we have seen a marked deterioration in our highway assets due to the damaging effect of the flooding and significant rain experienced across last winter, preceeded by the significant cold and snow events experienced in previous winters. The Council through its budget setting process has invested an additional £2.4 milliob (over and above existing Government grant settlements) into the highway infrastructure for 2014/15 

Over 110 sites will be improved through carriageway resurfacing, surface treatment, street lighting improvement works, highway structures refurbishment and improvement as well as a number of highway and land drainage improvement schemes.

In respect to the funding detailed above, it is proposed to 

·         Create a new large planned patching programme for sites that did not make the priority list for the carriageway resurfacing/surface treatment programme.  This will enable these sites to be kept safe and serviceable prior to consideration for next year’s programme.

·         Supplement the reactive highway inspector gang arrangement with additional gangs across the geographic inspection areas.  These are the gangs predominantly undertaking reactive pothole repairs works, so will increase our responsiveness to dealing with potholes and will allow us to repair more potholes over shorter space of time.  This will also achieve the Government's intention of the funding to deal with as many potholes as possible before and over the summer months.

Working through our Highway Maintenance and Improvement Works Contract with Skanska Infrastructure Services we intend to undertake most of this work before the end of the summer 2014.