Final Monitoring Report on Department for Transport (DfT) Pothole Fund 2019/20
Oldham Council were awarded £142,901 from the Department for Transport (DfT) Pothole Action Fund to spend in the 2019/20 financial year.
This is to be used to carry out works to prevent and/or permanently fix potholes on the local highway network that Oldham Council is responsible for.
This allocation was in addition to our local highway authority planned highways maintenance expenditure of £6.04m* in 2019/20.
A requirement of these awards is for Oldham Council to publish an annual progress report by the end of March 2020 for the Department for Transport, providing details of the works undertaken.
The detail of works carried out utilising this funding are below.
Previously Oldham Council has allocated this funding to resurfacing schemes on a small number of roads.
However, it was agreed by senior officers and the Portfolio Holder for Neighbourhood Services that the approach to utilise the funding in 2018/19 onwards would be to implement an ‘enhanced patching’ programme.
This approach would remove existing defects, both actionable and not yet actionable, and have the potential to lower the level of defects being picked up through inspections and queries from the public.
This ‘enhanced patching’ would treat larger sections of carriageway (areas greater than 100m2) of full carriageway width.
This will provide a tougher surface course and ensure the life expectancy of the surface is as high as possible.
Locations were selected using live data on the existing condition of the network, including actionable defects and enquiries submitted by members of the public.
This approach was used across the borough to spend the allocation of £142,901. Specifically, the 2019/20 allocation covered:
- Locations in three geographical areas of Oldham (Moorside, Saddleworth and Royton);
- 17 specific locations within the above areas benefitted from ‘enhanced patching’;
- A total of 6,671 square metres of ‘enhanced patching’ was completed with the 2019/20 allocation.
*Figure includes footways and excludes retaining walls.