Cumbria Highways has so far repaired 1,516 potholes across the county since launching its blitz on road damage caused by recent bad weather.
The Cumbria County Council agreed to make £1million available from the General Reserves to deal with the unprecedented number of highways defects left on the county’s roads following weeks of damaging weather conditions.
From Monday, January 28th, six new dedicated highways teams joined twelve existing teams prioritising the pothole problem.
Between starting work on January 28th and finishing on Tuesday this week (February 8th), the combination of highways teams together repaired 1,516 potholes. They have dealt with hundreds of drainage issues on the roads
As well as repairing potholes work on a larger scale has been done by planing off larger lengths of road and relaying the whole surface with a paving machine.
The teams are blitzing individual areas in each of the districts before moving on to new patches.
There are around 5,000 individual carriageway defects logged on the Cumbria Highways system. Many, but by no means all, have been flagged-up by members of the public calling the Highways Hotline (0845 609 6609).
Repair teams are targeting specific areas to fix reported defects but they are at the same time tackling other problems - on the A5074 from Gilpin Bridge to Windermere in South Lakeland they tackled 20 reported defects but a further 121 were identified and dealt with by the team. Similarly, the Operational Control Room records showed twelve reported potholes on the A6071 between Brampton and Longtown while the team on the ground actually repaired 38.
Cumbria Highways will continue to do its best to make progress in the potholes issue. But priorities may vary if more severe winter weather arrives.
ENDS