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ITEM CA9

CABINET – 21 MARCH 2006

HIGHWAY MAINTENANCE PROGRAMME 2006/07

Report by Head of Transport

1. This report lists the proposed expenditure on highway maintenance activities programmed for 2006/07 from both the capital and revenue budgets.
2. The available revenue budget of £17, 563,734 consists of the agreed base revenue budget, plus a standard inflation allowance of 2%, an additional contract inflation allowance of 1% and an ongoing 2004/05 Policy and Budget Plan allowance for the revenue implications of Capital Schemes. In addition there is funding to cover increased energy costs identified within the 2006/07 non-discretionary budget pressures.
3. Offsetting these increases to the base budget are the agreed reductions to meet the Efficiency Savings and Budget Pressures and also budget virements which need to be agreed to cover a small shortfall in the staffing budget as a result of an increase in the insurance premium.
4. For clarity Annex 1 (download as .xls file) sets out the calculation of the Highway Management Road Maintenance Revenue Budget in tabular form and for comparison shows the sum allocated in 2005/06.
5. There is a basic structural maintenance capital budget of £13,772,000 plus an additional £2,450,000 specifically allocated for de-trunked roads. The total allocation is from the agreed transport element of the Supported Capital Expenditure (Revenue) (SCE(R)) for 2006/07 and will remain provisional until final confirmation of the capital programme which is subject to another report at this meeting.
6. Over and above the SCE(R) allocation a further sum (at present estimated to be £2,145,000) will be carried forward from the 2005/06 allocation for ongoing major maintenance on the A40. Approval has been obtained from GOSE to carry funding into 2006/07 to enable the maintenance works to be co-ordinated with improvement works planned for the Green Road Roundabout, Headington.
7. At the end of January there is a forecast 2005/06 revenue underspend within Highways Management of £100k that is planned to be carried forward to fund the ongoing Business Process Review of the Highway Management service. This has previously been agreed by Cabinet in the course of revenue monitoring.

Insurance Premiums

8. Although the County Council robustly defends highway compensation claims, and is generally successful, industry costs have continued to rise and our premiums will rise by £20k in 2006/07.

Energy Costs

9. The energy contract is due for renewal from 1 October 2006. The current contract that started on 1 October 2005 saw a substantial increase in the price of energy over previous years and as costs continue to rise an increase of £570,000 over the 2005/06 budget is forecast for 2006/07.

Service Priority for Local Roads and Pavements

10. Following on from 2004/05 and 2005/06 the available budget has again been prioritised to support the County Council’s objective to improve the condition of local roads and pavements while at the same time holding the condition of the principal road network at its present level.
11. The balance of budget allocations has been addressed to better reflect the different conditions and demands in the North and South of the County. Studies reveal for example that the condition of local roads in the South leads to their costing more in reactive maintenance than roads in the North. As more work is carried out to formalise asset management the more budgets will be refined and the more tailored the service will become to meet local demands.

Overview of Local Non-Principal Roads Condition

12. The desperate state of non-principal roads towards the end of 2000/01 had been significantly improved by the end of 2002/03 by directing more of the maintenance budget to carriageway maintenance schemes. During 2004/05 approximately £3.7 million of additional funding was spent on the network to address the widespread damage caused by clay shrinkage during the exceptionally dry summer of 2003. Following the actions, the Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs) for classified and unclassified non-principal roads have improved.
13. The total amount of repairs justified by assessment continues to be very high. However, the backlog of maintenance work has yet to be addressed, and roads remain vulnerable to weather damage, and to the demands placed upon them by traffic. The County Council has responsibility for maintaining over 3,800 kilometres of non-principal roads and, with the exception of urgent/safety type repairs, most of the minor rural roads and urban estate roads are receiving little or no structural or preventative maintenance. Work is currently in hand to more accurately determine the size of the overall maintenance backlog, but current estimates value this at well over £100 million, with about 90% of this attributable to the non-principal road network.
14. If the County Council is to deal with this backlog, a sustained level of spending is required for deterioration to be controlled and improvements maintained. Scheme funding in 2006/07 is therefore being targeted, within budget constraints, to the sites of highest priority, alongside a significantly increased allocation for surface dressing treatments to improve safety by restoring surface texture and preserve structural integrity.
15. With pro-active asset management planning, a strategy is being developed to map out, over a number of years, the parts of the highway network where funds should be directed to achieve greatest benefit and maximum return. Consequently, non-principal roads are likely to receive a greater proportion of the assessed schemes structural maintenance budget than before. This should also impact positively on the CPA score for highways.

Principal Roads (‘A’ roads)

16. The County Council maintains over 650 kilometres of Principal Roads, including a number of recently de-trunked roads that have an important strategic function and carry high volumes of commercial and other traffic.
17. The priority and investment given to principal road strengthening in recent years has improved their condition to the point that the target set in the Local Transport Plan was met by the end of 2002/03, a rate of improvement that placed Oxfordshire in the top quartile of authorities nationally for this indicator.
18. The condition prediction model based on surveys of road strength shows that funding in future years will need to be carefully balanced to keep principal roads at the optimum of 6 – 8% of roads requiring strengthening at any time, whilst simultaneously allowing sufficient funds to be re-directed to bring about continued improvements to the non-principal road network. These ambitions must also take account of other Local Transport Plan (LTP) targets including the reduction in the numbers of injury accidents involving skidding on wet roads. The sensitivity of the Principal Roads BVPI to expenditure is borne out by the marginal drop from 6% of roads requiring strengthening to 7% between 2003/04 and 2004/05 and to 8% in 2005/06. However, a number of expensive and high profile maintenance schemes have recently been completed, including A4144 Abingdon Road. Other schemes such as those on the A40 around Oxford are in the implementation stage, and should result in significant benefits to road users as well as being reflected positively in next years BVPI’s.
19. Finance for these capital funded schemes is obtained through the LTP process. The County Council has a good record in recent years for obtaining the amounts bid for major structural maintenance work. As well as providing technical justification for schemes, in future it will be necessary to demonstrate that sufficient emphasis is being placed on highway maintenance by the Authority if this level of capital funding is to continue or increase. A further point to note is the effect of proposed changes to the funding rules for ‘routine’ (revenue) based maintenance work on de-trunked roads. An announcement is expected some time during 2006/07, but the changes may well result in less money being granted to Oxfordshire for this work. If this does occur it will place additional pressure on the revenue budget.
20. High profile principal road schemes programmed for 2006/07 include repairs to the A40 between Cutteslowe and Sandhills, the A420 Shrivenham Bypass, and the A420 High Street in Oxford. The Principal Roads budget for 2006/07 is approximately £3million, with an additional £2million funding for A40 works carried forward from 2005/06.
21. Project appraisals for structural maintenance schemes in excess of £1m are included in the Annex to this report.

Footway (Pavement) Conditions

22. An increased level of funding for footways has been maintained in recent years with positive results. The year-on-year assessment ratings that signal the need for repair and, consequently, the level to which deterioration has occurred on footways across the county as a whole have shown a marked improvement, a has the BVPI overall. However, it must be stressed that there are large numbers of footways whose condition justifies repair that still do not make the programme.

Oxford City Centre Improvement

23. As in the last two years £400k of the 2006/07 budget has been allocated to footway improvements in the centre of Oxford. In 2005/06 the footways in the vicinity of the Oxford Castle site were improved to tie in with the new development. In 2006/07 it is proposed to combine the structural maintenance of the High Street from Carfax to Turl Street with "Streetscene" improvements of the footways with the added aim of reducing clutter.

Drainage System Maintenance

24. During 2005/06 the budget allocation of £350k, increased in 2004/05 from £300k, funded a total of 36 schemes. This included 5 major schemes, one of which - Clifton Hampden Stage 1 - was prioritised due to the failure of a brick culvert under the highway as well as serious flooding upstream. Further progress has been made into the backlog of schemes during the year and the budget will remain at £350k in 2006/07 in recognition that there are still areas of public concern over the need to protect highways and property from flooding.
25. As part of the reallocation of budgets between North and South gully cleaning budgets will be adjusted but no more funding will be available overall and it will continue not to be possible to carry out twice yearly cleaning of all gullies.

Bridge Strengthening and Structural Maintenance

26. The structural maintenance allocation includes funding for strengthening and structural maintenance of bridges. This includes a significant sum for working with Network Rail to strengthen substandard road over rail bridges. Progress has been slow due to the difficulties of working over railway lines; however, the County Council will complete the re-decking of Oxhey Road bridge near Cropredy and start work on Goring Station Bridge during 2006/07. Scheme development has commenced on Lower Heyford Railway Bridge, Potash Bridge at Milton and Wolvercote (Goose Green) Railway Bridge. Temporary restrictions are currently in place on these bridges.
27. Structural maintenance and strengthening of county bridges continues with major work on Shillingford Bridge, Marsh Lane Flyover and Bodicote Flyover proposed for 2006/07. The last remaining substandard bridge on the principal road network is Newbridge carrying the A415 over the River Thames at Standlake. This bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2010/11 because strengthening is not possible and work has started on identifying options that will preserve the historic bridge and provide an alternative crossing.
28. Expenditure on structural (LTP) bridge maintenance and strengthening will be less than allocated at £1.86M but will increase in future years as schemes are constructed. The overall maintenance budget has therefore been based on the premise that bridge maintenance funding over and above that figure will be added to the roads budget in the short term and repaid when the outstanding bridgeworks are committed.

Bridge Condition and Routine Maintenance

29. Draft performance measures are now available from DfT for bridges. Using the Bridge Condition Indicator determined from regular bridge inspections the condition of bridges in Oxfordshire is classed as good, but is showing a small year on year deterioration. The revenue allocation for routine bridge maintenance remains at the same level in real terms as 2005/06.

Allocation of the Available Budget to the Programme

30. The use of the available budget has been prioritised to support the ‘Cleaner/Greener’ agenda and the County Council’s objective to improve the condition of local roads and pavements while at the same time holding the condition of the principal road network at its present level. The use of the available budget can be best summarised as follows:

• The allocation for structural maintenance schemes on Principal roads is increased by £1.7m
• The non-principal schemes budget last year was supplemented with £1.28m of additional funding for emergency repairs to drought damaged roads. The 06/07 base line figure for non-principal roads is therefore slightly higher than last year.
• The budget for assessed footway schemes is increased by £240k for 2006/07. Within this the £400k identified for Central Oxford Enhancements will be used as a contribution to the high profile maintenance and streetscape improvements to High Street, Oxford. The additional investment in footways will also improve the best value performance indicator for footways (BV 187).
• £190k is allocated this year specifically to Mobility Crossings, for dropped kerbs and ramps to be constructed for improved access to footways at certain locations.
• The trend to increase the Surface Dressing budget year on year continues in 2006/07 with an additional investment of £0.5m. £1m of the allocation is to be targeted to improving skidding resistance at specific sites, and for signing of other sites in the forward programme where there is poor skidding resistance.
• As part of the Cleaner/Greener priority additional funds will be directed to the maintenance of verges along High Speed Roads, to enable two full cuts to be performed per session. £20k has also been set aside for trialling a ‘cut & collect’ machine that gathers the arisings as they are mown. If successful, it is likely that the machine coverage will be increased next year.
• Continuing with the Cleaner/Greener theme, £300k has been targeted specifically for cleaning signs and for clearance of vegetation around them.
• Furthermore, the budget for Weed Control has been almost tripled for 2006/07 to enable repeat treatments to be applied.
• The allocation for Village Maintenance gangs has been increased substantially for the second consecutive year to £1,537,800.
• £200k will be spent on 2006/07 on improvements to signalised pedestrian crossings that should also result in improvements to BVPI 165 which is a key indicator for improvement to the CPA rating.
• The allocation for Area Traffic Schemes has been reduced to support the investment in highway maintenance. Traffic schemes will become funded principally from LTP and need to be justified against the objectives of the LTP.
• £15k has been allocated to expedite the reinstatement of road markings in Central Oxford for more efficient parking control.
• £150k has been directed to Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) to identify further opportunities for organisational and procedural reform which will lead to improved operations and efficiencies.

31. The highlighted increases in budget allocations have been realised through an increasingly pro-active approach to asset management that has enabled funds to be better directed to service the present needs of the network, rather than on a predominantly historical basis. The amounts allocated within the 2006/07 highway maintenance budget have been re-aligned to reflect this, although overall the revenue budget remains at a similar level to 2005/06.

Oxford City Section 42 Submission and Allocation

32. After lengthy discussions at officer level indicated that there may be better ways of delivering a range of services in Oxford City, the City Council withdrew from the negotiations and continue to claim their right under Section 42 of the Highways Act to maintain the unclassified roads in Oxford. Section 42 requires the City Council to submit by 15 December an estimate of maintenance works costs for the following financial year. The County Council may approve the estimate as submitted or with modifications.
33. The City Council has submitted an estimate as required and this is shown in column A of Annex 3 (download as .doc file). The estimate includes the cost of repairs to all defects noted on all of the unclassified roads and is the equivalent within Oxford of the total backlog for the County as a whole. The recommended modified estimate is shown in Column B. The modified estimate carries on the methodology that is based on a proportionate share of relevant 2004/05 County Council allocations, with adjustments for 2005/06 inflation. The modified estimates for assessed carriageway and footway schemes are the totals of schemes in Oxford City that have been through the same rating process as all other similar schemes in the county and are included in the programme lists in the Members’ Resource Centre.

Snow Clearing

34. The County Council has a duty under the Highways Act 1980 to remove snow from the highway. Section 150 (1) states that "if an obstruction arises in a highway from accumulation of snow or from the falling down of banks on the side of the highway, or from any other cause, the highway authority shall remove the obstruction".
35. It is generally accepted that any accumulation of snow which prevents safe or convenient access to any community has to be cleared as quickly as possible in compliance of this duty.
36. There are no funds within the Environment & Economy budgets to clear snow, which could cost in excess of £500,000 per day and a "Policy for the financial implications of snow clearance" was agreed at this meeting a year ago. It is intended to continue with this protocol to give the Head of Transport a degree of confidence that the initial expenditure on snow clearing will be centrally funded.

Summary Tables

37. Attached to the report are the following:

• Annex 1 contains a breakdown of the Highway Management revenue budget (download as .xls file).
• A summary of the planned expenditure on all activities is shown in Annex 2 (download as .doc file).
• Annex 3 Oxford City Council Section 42 estimate and recommended modified estimate as explained above.(download as .doc file)
• Annex 4 is a summary of the standards of non-assessed maintenance activities and budgets.(download as .doc file)
• Annex 5 contains Capital Project Detailed Resource Appraisals for the A420 High Street, Oxford improvements; A40 Cutteslowe to Headington and Sandhills and A420 Shrivenham Bypass Structural Maintenance schemes.(download as .doc file)

38. Lists of the individual schemes included in the programme on the basis of the ratings derived from surveys of each site have been put in the Members’ Resource Centre. Separate lists are given for drought damaged roads, principal roads, non-principal roads and footway schemes.

RECOMMENDATION

39. The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to:

1. endorse the details of the 2006/07 Highway Maintenance programme as set out in Annex 2 subject to confirmation of the capital funding for structural maintenance;
2. approve the Oxford City Council’s Section 42 estimate as modified and shown in Column B of Annex 3;
3. approve the Detailed Project Appraisals at Annex 5.

STEVE HOWELL
Head of Transport

Background papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Brian Fell Tel 01865 815083

March 2006

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