Lancashire County Council leaders who claim the number of potholes on Lancashire’s roads is falling have been called into question by the opposition Labour Group, who say a new measuring standard introduced by the Conservatives disguises the true story.
A recent council press release hailed, “a decrease in over a third in the number of potholes being found. 38 per cent fewer were found by highways inspectors or reported by the public in 2018/19 (39,137) compared with two years earlier in 2016/17 (62,564).”
But figures by the County Council’s Cabinet Performance Committee (12th September 2019) admits the criteria for filling a pothole was changed by the council’s Conservative leadership:
“The approved highways defect repair policy was implemented during quarter 2 of 2018/19, meaning that reporting changed in accordance with that policy.”
This policy set a new ‘minimum intervention level’, by which potholes less than 4cm deep (and in pavement less than 2.5cm) are judged as requiring ‘no intervention’. The new policy was accompanied by training courses for councillors, explaining, by means of 4cm blocks of wood how lesser depths would no longer count. Meanwhile highways officers were told to judge the new standard armed only with tape measures.
The criteria changed after a disastrous year for potholes at the county council, in which only 64% were fixed within the target 20 days. The figure was 97% only 14 months earlier under a Labour administration.
County Councillor Gillian Oliver (Preston South West), highways and transport lead for Labour, said “This Conservative administration has moved the goalposts on potholes.
“They have purposefully excluded an unknown number of reports from the public and instructed officers to turn a blind eye to genuine defects. Then they call their reducing caseload a triumph! But this kind of triumph is one made in an office on a spreadsheet, and the people of Lancashire do not find it convincing.”
The Cabinet Performance Committee also red-flagged the Conservative administration’s failure to meet its targets on major route potholes requiring urgent repair (within two days), where performance fell between the last quarter of last year and the first quarter of this [94.14% – 88.76% – target 95%], and on non-urgent cases where action is needed within five days.
• The new intervention policy here | Cabinet performance here (PDF)
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