Issue - meetings

Report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport.

20.1     The Contract Manager Highway Infrastructure Services introduced the report. ESCC has been an early adopter of the asset management approach, which is now linked to the Department of Transport (DfT) incentive funding. The incentive funding was introduced in 2014 and is assessed by a set of 22 self-assessment questions which are submitted to DfT each year. Evidence is required to support the assessment and the submission is verified by the Council’ Section 151 Officer, the Chief Finance Officer. If the Council had not achieved band 3 status, it would have lost £1.73 million of DfT revenue funding from the incentive fund.

20.2     It was clarified that in order to achieve band 3 funding the Council has to meet band 3 in 18 out of 22 questions. Currently the Council has been assessed as achieving band 3 in 19 out of the 22 questions. The Contract Manager Highway Infrastructure Services outlined that the Council has achieved band 3 so will not drop down to band 2 funding levels, and the Team are working on the remaining questions to be guaranteed band 3 status in future. It is likely that the Council will be able to achieve band 3 scores in resilient network and drainage. The final area is developing longer term forward programmes of work. At present there are well developed forward work programmes in some areas such as carriageway repairs, but there are others where more work is needed.

20.3     The Assistant Director Operations added that in future the incentive funding may be linked to the Well Managed Highways Infrastructure Code of Practice. The Council is in a good position should this be the case. The early adoption of an asset management approach by the Council is paying dividends and has enabled the Council to maintain 100% of the available DfT funding.

20.4     The Committee discussed the report on the Highway Asset Plan and the DfT incentive funding. The following points were made during the discussion of the report.

·          The information for the DfT incentive funding has to be submitted annually at the end of the financial year.

·          The road network classifications used in the road network hierarchy are reviewed at regular intervals and the Team Manager, Asset Management confirmed that the Team are currently updating road network hierarchy.

·          It was clarified that concrete roads in appropriate conditions (e.g. housing / industrial estates with low statutory undertakers renewals) have a long lifespan, but they take much longer to construct due to curing times and are difficult to repair, so this method is rarely used outside of motorways and industrial estates.

·          The resurfacing programme usually employs around three teams to carry out resurfacing across the County.

·          Thin surfacing (e.g. surface dressing) and other specialist treatments like jet patching usually involves using specialist equipment which is delivered using one team to carry out a programme of work once a year, usually during summertime due to materials being temperature sensitive.

·          The Council does use night time working for busy roads,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20