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ITEM EX11

ENVIRONMENT SCRUTINY COMMITTEE –
15^th OCTOBER 2003

REVIEW OF QUALITY OF HIGHWAY REPAIRS & DRAINAGE

Report of the Lead Member Review Group

Section 1 - Summary

1. In developing its recommendations, the Scrutiny Committee asked the Lead Member Review Group to assess a range of issues around highway maintenance, specifically looking at the outcomes of repair work , its extent and timeliness, and the suitability of current drainage clearing programmes. The purpose of this review therefore was to:

• comment on optimum levels of funding;
• comment on current strategy and policy;
• address the issue of public satisfaction;
• and make recommendations to improve the service.

Land drainage was omitted from the review’s scope as it is a very complex area with multi-various agencies often involved. The specific objectives of the review are set out in the scoping document in annex 1.

1. The Review Group found that in general highway maintenance is not fulfilling the public’s expectations for the road network. Senior managers and engineers in the service put much of this is down to a history of inadequate funding, and even with recent budgetary improvements anticipate that the network may well get worse before it gets better. These arguments have been put forward by the service in recent years and to some extent acknowledged by the Executive.
2. Despite the vast amount of budgetary and financial information available, Review Members found difficulty in absorbing and processing such information. In comparing information from different documents produced over the years by Environment & Economy and other parts of the Council we found comparisons hard to make, often because reports were concerned with differing aspects of the service. This has hindered the drawing of firm conclusions. However, the Review suspects that current budget levels are at least £2m short of what is required to improve conditions but has reluctantly had to settle for recommending further work be carried out if the budget position is to be properly understood and compared to actual need rather than simply topping up previously determined financial regimens. Members welcome the Executive’s recent initiative under the title ‘Maximising Our Resources’, which attempts to make financial information available to Members in a more digestible form, and its Base Budget Review of Highways.
3. What is clear is the extent of public dissatisfaction with the state of roads in general, and repairs and drainage in particular. Headline results from the MORI-conducted residents surveys are confirmed by findings from three questionnaires conducted specially for this review. These are reported here and used to set the tone for much of the rest of the report (fuller accounts of survey responses are provided in the background research material for this review, located in the Members Resource Centre in County Hall). There is a perception amongst some officers and councillors that such views are often based on conditions from a few years ago, when bad weather and budget cuts combined to overwhelm the authority’s capacity for repair. Despite this view recommendations are made to address public satisfaction.
4. Lack of feedback to residents reporting faults, particularly those not immediately repaired, is judged to be a key factor in the public’s negative perception of highway maintenance. Boosting customer focus and providing a well marketed single point of contact where staff can provide accurate information to residents on the progress being made following a defect report is crucial. Some of these ideas were contained within the Best Value review, and reference is made within this report to long delays in implementing parts of the action plans agreed two years ago by the service.
5. Increasing repair demand coupled with reduced budgets meant that potholes and cracks could often only be temporarily repaired, which led to much complaint and a perception that repair work is of a poor quality. In 2002/ 03 the policy was changed to do permanent repairs first time. The review surveys found much support for this. However, higher than expected cost increases meant that it was not possible to fully switch to carrying out higher quality patching. Though there is some objective evidence that conditions are improving the public have not noticed. The Committee believe that doing repairs properly first time with hot tarmac will help to restore public confidence. Similarly increased costs for gully cleansing have meant that restoration of budgets has not enabled a return to twice a year levels. Again to improve public perceptions the division needs to be able to inform people of which gullies are known to be problematic and how often they have been visited.
6. The review discovered a perception that sub-standard work by both the Council’s contractor and utility companies is not always detected. 10% of utility reinstatement work is actually examined to ensure it complies with legislated standards. This has detected a number of failures with the result that companies may be more likely to improve their compliance. The Committee suggests that better arrangements should be made for frequent and regular monitoring of the effectiveness of inspection. At present contractor work largely relies upon self-monitoring. The Committee agree with the contractor that their self-monitoring needs improvement. Currently the contract is based upon input specifications, which mean that compliance with the contract will not necessarily result in the desired outcomes. The Committee feel there is mileage in exploring adoption of outcome specifications, in line with Code of Practice recommendations, to make contracts performance based. However some senior managers do not share this view.
7. The Review recognise that highway maintenance will never be able to please everyone, and that the service has a difficult balancing act to do. Prioritising is inevitable in a time of limited resources and this means that some repairs are inevitably postponed, or in some cases may never be done. However the report presents a number of recommendations as well as some of the steps that should be taken to implement them. We hope that these recommendations are to be welcomed not just by the Executive but also by the service itself. Overall, Members feel that a shift of emphasis within the service is needed to enable a greater focus on outcomes for the public and less on inputs and organisational concerns.

8. The Committee WELCOMES the Executive’s thorough Base Budget Review of Highways, which we expect will enable Councillors to have a much clearer appreciation of the financial situation with regard to highway maintenance, and may facilitate more meaningful comparisons with other Local Authorities in future. [p.13]

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Committee RECOMMENDS the Executive to: