The DfT’s reports into the condition of roads, including in Cheshire West and Chester, can be found on the Gov.UK website.

How is Highways work funded?

Highways funding is split into mainly two areas – revenue and capital:

Revenue: this comes from the Council budgets and is used for daily general maintenance activities
Capital: funding is provided by central government grants and the Council’s own investment and delivers improvements to the road network

We also submit funding bids for other improvement works for specific projects that meet the criteria for budget allocations. We submit an application against other bidders with the aim to be successful in securing additional grant funding.

How are the schemes chosen?

Our Asset Management policy sets out our approach to identifying schemes for treatment each year. It is important that we remain neutral and impartial in these decisions and treat all roads in the borough in a fair and transparent way.

The Department for Transport funding requires us to move towards a preventative measure basis (to maintain sites before they deteriorate too badly). This enables us to prolong the life of our network in a much more economical way.

The selection of schemes and treatments is based on the right time to treat roads in each state in its lifecycle. Where a road that has deteriorated to a level where a preventative treatment in no longer viable, then it will be re-assessed to see where this sits in our structural works priority - these are sites that have deteriorated to a degree that they require structural work, eg. carriageway resurfacing etc.

We have two different programmes of work:

Preventative treatment

Roads that are in a reasonable condition but would benefit from a treatment to prolong their condition.

There are several different treatment types designed to extend the life of the existing surface and to stop the roads deteriorating into a state where reactive maintenance will be required.

Structural (reactive) works

Roads that have deteriorated so require more substantial work such as resurfacing or structural deeper reconstruction work.

Scheme design

The list of schemes, identified using our asset management approach, set the annual forward programme for the different work streams. We assess the identified schemes with our Delivery Partner to agree the most appropriate treatment to ensure value for money.

A full detailed design will be undertaken including site investigation, scoping of works (measure of site, appropriate traffic management etc); safety requirements to undertake the works safety and assessment of cost.

Following design, these works are programmed and where possible advertised to inform residents, businesses, and commuters of the proposed start dates. These dates can vary and change during programmes as these types of work are generally weather dependant.

Live roadworks