So Where Are We With Major Road Repairs?

5th March 2024

Road conditions have been deteriorating for many years in Caithness and across all of Scotland.

Almost a year ago highland council approved a further £7.7 million.

Some roads have been done and others are underway.

Only a fraction of the necessary work can be carried out with the money available.

Go back and read the council paper to see if a road near you has happened or about to.

The one thing missing about announcements is usually what they will not do. Sums of money are often meaningless but the announcement did come with alit of roads and lengths to be done. But it still did not say anything about roads not included in the programmes.

28 April 2024
£7.7M capital investment for strategic road schemes across Highlands.

Members at next week's meeting of the Council's Economy and Infrastructure Committee will be allocating the distribution of £7.7M of the £20.5M capital roads budget specifically for carriageway structural maintenance.

Chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, Cllr Ken Gowans said: "Many of our roads are suffering from lack of attention due to limited resources over a number of years. The capital allocation for roads has been significantly increased for 2023/24. I am sure the committee members will join me in welcoming the £7.7M of capital funding for strategic projects as it will allow us to address the poor condition on some of our road assets across the region.

"The project list the Committee will discuss has been compiled taking a diverse approach, looking at urban and rural localities as well as all classes of roads, including where representations from Members or the public had been received. These strategic projects are additional to the ones already agreed by Area Committees who have considered their share of capital investment.

"By targeting these strategic projects, which can all be started and completed over the coming year, we hope to make a positive impact with the resources available to us."

Convener Cllr Bill Lobban added: "It was a key budget decision by the Highland Council to significantly increase the capital allocation for road so it is good to know that plans are underway for the money to be spent to improve roads in our communities."

The Highland Council has the longest road network in the UK with over 4,200 miles of local roads, over 1,000 miles of footpaths and more than 2,200 bridges and culverts spanning a region covering one third of Scotland.

The strategic projects members will be considering are spread across all geographic areas of the Highlands and include the following projects.

Badenoch & Strathspey - Overlay works on the A939 Bridge of Brown route

Caithness - Overlay and inlay works to the A99 Wick - John O'Groats route; overlay works on the U2052 at Shebster and on the C1010 Dunnet - Corsback Road.

Inverness - Overlay works on the B851 Farr to A9 and the A833 at Glen Convinth; inlays work on the U4608 Carsegate Road.

Lochaber - Overlay works on the B8005 Gairlochy - Clunes and on the A884 at White Glen; Inlay works on the A681 at Strontian.

Nairn - Overlay works on the B9101 B9090 junction to Geddes Burn

Ross and Cromarty - Inlay works to the A890 at West Achnasheen and overlay works on the A890 at Achnashellach

Skye - Surfacing works on the B886 Fairy Bridge - Stein and on the A851 at Kinloch; Inlay works on the A850 Snizort Bridge-Peiness Road.

Sutherland - Overlay works on the A836 Tongue - Thurso and on the A897 Helmsdale – Melvich road; Edge strengthening works on the B9176 Ardgay – Evanton road and inlay works to the A839 Lairg – The Mound.

The full list is available on the Council's website Pdf

The Committee will also discuss the results of the Scottish Road Maintenance Condition Survey for 2022/23. This independent survey is an annual survey which assesses the condition of the Scottish adopted road network. It is used to calculate a Road Condition Indicator (RCI) that is used by Audit Scotland as a Statutory Performance Indicator for reporting road condition.

In Highland the survey sample equates to approximately 2,910km of road, just under 43% of the total network. The Council's ranking has improved from 26th position to 25th amongst Scottish Local Authorities.

It is normal practice to wait until all Local Authority results are available before publishing the findings. However, due to the high interest from the public, following the discussions, the committee will be asked to agree that the RCI result for Highland be published on the website ahead of a detailed report being presented to a future committee when all Local Authority results are available for publication.

To get a better perspective of the scale problems read -
2015
https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/maintaining-scotlands-roads
£25billion was required to do all the work and nothing like that has been spent.

2016
Follow Up Report
https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/maintaining-scotlands-roads

https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/uploads/docs/report/2011/nr_110216_road_maintenance.pdf

Details of road length etc can be found in this chapter
https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/scottish-transport-statistics-no-39-2020-edition/chapter-4-road-network/

Comment
Whether you read all these lengthy reports or not Caithness is lucky to have some road champions in councillor Matthew Reiss and Chair of the Caithness roads Recovery group Iain Gregory - support them when you can in their uphill struggle to get more done for us all.