Department for Transport – Additional Local Highways Maintenance Funding

The Department for Transport made available addition funding for local councils for financial years 2013/14 and 2014/15. The funding is for improvements such as road resurfacing, maintenance to bridges or repairing damaged highway infrastructure caused by severe weather events such as flooding. For Tameside MBC, the allocation is £329,000 for 2013/14 and £192,000 for 2014/15. The funding is in addition to other capital and revenue funding streams. The additional highways maintenance funding has enabled works at identified locations to be extended to provide protection to particular parts of the network in terms of added resilience against extended periods of extreme weather.

Work has taken place to improve a number of the borough’s high level routes in terms of surface improvements to prevent water ingress, improvements to drainage channels and run off management. Locations include; Werneth Low Road, Hyde, Hobson Moor Road, Mottram, Quickedge Road, Mossley etc.

Also, at locations where there are known or potential flooding issues, additional protection has been incorporated into planned works, i.e. additional drainage capacity, catchments etc. in order to reinforce the network, e.g. Huddersfield Road, Stalybridge where surface water catchment has been extended over a wider area to help alleviate localised flood risks.

For bridges and structures, the additional funding has been used to augment the repairs to a number of highway retaining walls, in particular adjacent to the valleys in the east of the borough. These walls either directly support the highway or land adjacent to the highway. Many of these walls are over 100 years old and are, in the main, constructed of dry-stone masonry blocks.

Works have been undertaken to reconstruct sections of walls to modern standards, incorporating improved drainage provisions. Over recent winters, sections of dry-stone walls have shown increased signs of deterioration following extended periods of heavy rainfall. The additional funding enabled works to be undertaken that resulted in additional resilience to section of these walls. This includes a series of walls built to support the highway along Mossley Road, Stamford Road, Mossley, Wakefield Road, Stalybridge etc.

In addition, the funding has provided additional resources to be made available to assist with the prevention of the flooding of the entrance to the culvert at Halton Street, Hyde.

Whilst this funding has enabled additional protection to be incorporated into a number of schemes, on-going forward, the frequency and severity of weather events is of concern, particular at times when maintenance funding is under continual financial pressures.

April 2014 - Department for Transport - Additional Highways Maintenance Funding

The Department for Transport made available additional highway maintenance funding for local councils in March 2014. The funding is for repairs to surfaces damaged by the prolonged wet winter weather which resulted in many surface defects developing into potholes across our road and footway network. For Tameside MBC, the figure made available by the Department for Transport was £220,026.

This funding is additional to the Tameside MBC £1,081,000 highway revenue allocation. The additional funding has enabled larger areas of repairs to be carried out at locations of highway defects. Accordingly, not only have repairs to defects been completed, but also repairs to surround areas have been undertaken to reduce the risk of adjoining areas failing and therefore needing unplanned repairs next winter.

Locations of repairs include; Katherine Street, Ashton-under-Lyne. Roe Cross Road, Mottram. Also a number of roads in the Shakespeare Crescent / Milton Road area of Stalybridge.

In addition, this funding has enabled us to undertake repairs to roads that were not part of planned works schemes and accordingly improve road surfaces for residents and commuters. Roads include; Atlas Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, Fir Clough Crescent, Dukinfield, Pentland Way, Hyde, Windsor Road, Hyde, Arles Lane, Stalybridge.

Going forward we will look to use any and all available funding to increase the resilience of our highway network to minimise unplanned repairs and associated costs. We will also continue to develop and use innovative repair techniques e.g. Jet Patching to increase the efficiency of highway repairs and help sustain our network.