Action on Ashurst and Birch Green potholes

FURTHER to my postings here and here, I’m glad to report that the potholes on Ivybridge and at Ashurst Centre have been filled in.

I must thank Lancs County Council who not only fixed the areas I identified, but actually filled in every single pothole on Ivybridge and Lyndale.

Sherrat Street disgrace

I TOOK this pic yesterday of the disgraceful state of the road surface on Sherrat Street in Old Skelmersdale.

I shall be requesting that Lancs County Council takes action to sort this out.

Again, words fail me how our roads are allowed to get into such a terrible state. Surely LCC’s annual inspections, which it claims it carries out, would have alerted them to this problem before now.

Ivybridge – potholes and cracked surfacing

YET more pothole problems, this time on Ivybridge, Birch Green, at its junction with Northway.

Lancs County Council, the highways authority, have been informed, but to be honest, I’d be gobsmacked if they didn’t already know about these potholes, they’re quite dreadful and in a very prominent position.

It makes me wonder how our road surfaces are allowed to get into this kind of state in the first place…

Lancaster Crescent road surface needs sorting

ON my way to the chippy the other night I noticed just how bad the road surface on Lancaster Crescent at its junction with School Lane.

The surface is looking pretty worn, so I’ve requested that the highways authority looks at resurfacing it as soon as possible.

I’ll keep you posted on any developments.

UPDATE: The County Council has confirmed Lancaster Crescent is not down for repairs at the moment but following my representations, they have agreed to inspect the road and have promised to get back to me once the matter has been investigated.

Skem’s roads are 30 years past their best

FURTHER to my posting last week about the decrepit state of some of Skelmersdale’s roads, I wrote to Lancashire County Council’s chief executive to highlight my concerns.

Today, I received this letter back from the highways dept which I think deserves a wider audience as it is very informative and explains in detail a lot of the problems I and many others have been complaining about for years:

Dear Mr Sudworth

Thank you for your concerns raised in your email of the 17th May to Ged Fitzgerald who has asked me to respond as this area of the County Council’s services is my responsibility.

The situation that you describe is fairly common within the road system in Skelmersdale and is generally due to the fact that the road network was built in a fairly short period of time in the sixties. These roads were designed for a life of 20 years and have now gone well past this at nearly 50 years. In addition the roads were designed to the traffic levels, predicted at that point, with growth factors that have proved to be insufficient to cope well with modern traffic levels and weights.

The specific situations referred to at Tarlswood and the Tamneys are that the surfaces were slurry sealed in last year, a treatment designed to improve the surface texture, provide waterproofing and to prevent further short term deterioration of the surface. This is not designed to reprofile or strengthen the surface and reflective cracking from the previous surface can reappear as seen here. However, this situation is exacerbated due to this is also the track of an old reinstatement. This localised area will now have to be treated on an individual basis and I will ensure that this is programmed into a patching schedule.

We are well aware of the state of the network in Skelmersdale and are repairing and resurfacing the network in a priority manner within the resources at our disposal. This will, of necessity, lead to a significant amount of patching of the network in order to preserve safety to the travelling public both on the roads and the footways. Whilst this may appear to be a waste of funds continually carrying out this work this is essential to preserve the integrity of the carriageway and reduce the significant costs of full reconstruction and the third party insurance claims that arise in these situations.

Consequently, I hope that I can assure you that, within the resources that are available at present, the treatments to the network in Skelmersdale is being managed in the most cost effective manner that we can.

Yours sincerely

So there it is – it’s a case of the County not having, or rather not allocating, enough cash do fix the roads properly, which is why we see a patchwork of potholes and cracks on roads that have only fairly recently been given attention.

I sympathize with the County Council that, in effect, it has inherited a road network that was a) not built to last and b) received little investment at the time when it was needed.

However. the situation as we have it means that, to use a medical analogy, the Council is being forced to more or less put a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. I kind of understand the reasoning behind this in the short term, but the issue is that if the Council is only looking for short-term fixes, it will only get short-term results.

I’ve written back to the County thanking them for their full reply and urging them to put monies aside to properly fix the highways system. After 30 years of waiting, I think it’s well overdue.