Reporting Road Defects
Dear Member,
I’m writing to enlist your support to keep local road maintenance a Council priority by reporting road defects.
It won’t have escaped your notice that our local roads are in a terrible state with untold numbers of potholes to negotiate every time you cycle and also very poorly maintained road and cycle path surfaces pretty well everywhere.
Undoubtedly, local councils would like to do more to sustain longer term maintenance but have been starved of funds by successive Governments.
However, it’s all a question of priorities and statutory obligations.
Nonetheless as recommended by Cycling UK and other cycling organisations, we need to keep maintenance problems to the forefront of Council priorities and the pressure on by constantly reporting and drawing attention to the road defects and potholes we come across as we cycle.
Therefore it maybe worth re-iterating how we go about that in West Northants.
The main reporting avenue is via Fixmystreet:
https://fixmystreet.northamptonshire.gov.uk/
Cycling UK has set up its own website and method of reporting hazards called fillthathole:
Cycling UK states: ‘Potholes can be more than a nuisance. They can be a danger to cyclists and others. In the UK, there’s an average of one road defect for every 110 metres of road. Local councils have a duty to maintain the roads, but they can only fill a pothole if they know about it. If you want it repaired, you have to report it. Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s head of campaigns, said : “What's happening is defects on some roads that require long term repair and maintenance is happening on a stopgap basis, that's not cost effective long term.
"There needs to be a plan for long term maintenance of this infrastructure A “holistic and long term approach” is needed in order to tackle potholes and road maintenance issues in the UK”
Cycling UK set up FillThatHole so all road users can have an easy way to report potholes and road defects wherever you find them. Cycling UK contacts the right people to get the roads repaired.’
Here are our three goals:
- Double the volume of potholes reported through the fillthathole.org.uk website to over 1,000 a month.
- Get all political parties to put vulnerable road users at the heart of their road strategy and maintenance decisions.
- Get all political parties to commit to reversing the decline in local roads funding
Can I therefore urge members to keep reporting potholes and road and cycle path defects so as to keep these issues to the forefront of council priorities.
The following West Northants website gives more information about response times and priorities:
https://www.westnorthants.gov.uk/roads-and-paths-maintenance/report-potholes-or-highway-problem