A report providing the Committee with an update on the progress of the investigatory level safety defect criteria (potholes) in relation to highway carriageway defects, seeking approval to amend the Policy for the management of Advertising A Boards on the public highway and updating the Committee on the Annual Status Options Reports for structures, carriageways and pavements.

Further to Minute 29 of the meeting held on 14 March 2022, the Executive Director of Economic Growth and Neighbourhood Services submitted a report that provided the Committee with an update on the progress of the investigatory level safety defect criteria (potholes) in relation to highway carriageway defects, sought approval to amend the Policy for the management of Advertising A Boards on the public highway and updated the Committee on the Annual Status Options Reports for structures, carriageways and pavements.  A copy of the Council’s A Board Policy Application Process and Conditions was attached to the report at Appendix A.

The report included a table that showed that there had been a significant decrease in actionable defects over the previous Financial Year (2022/23).  Customer contacts reporting carriageway defects had also significantly decreased over the previous two calendar years with 512 reported carriageway defects in 2021 and 271 in 2022.  The Council’s £9M capital investment into residential roads and pavements over the three years 2021/22 to 2022/23 had addressed the residential roads that were in most need.  This had reduced demand on actionable carriageway defects/pothole repairs, which along with service improvements had enabled the transition to addressing defects of a lesser depth manageable.  This had improved efficiency in the Highways and Drainage Operations Team as well as customer satisfaction, road safety and defending public liability claims.  Analysis of performance compared with standard defect repair times had shown that the Highway Works Team were exceeding the performance standard for repair times which showed that there was currently capacity to continue with the lower investigatory level criteria.  The Highways Asset Management Team had also made further efficiency savings by adopting a cloud based management tool that had improved speed of data transfer and had also allowed a saving of over £1,000 per asset management tablet, which was being reinvested back into the service.  The Annual National Highways and Transport MORI Residents Satisfaction Surveys for 2022 had shown an improvement with 142 indicators being about average and 90 indicators improving, with the biggest improvement being in how the Council was dealing with the potholes/damaged roads indicator.  The Highways Works Team were repairing the statutory pothole safety defect repairs within repair timescales and the vast majority of 28 day repair orders were being completed within the first week of issue.  This had created capacity within the team to not only manage the statutory repair work, but also to take on additional income generation opportunities.

The report explained that the A-Board Policy, that had been adopted in November 2018, had had varying degrees of success and following the Covid-19 pandemic, and the subsequent need to support business recovery, enforcement of the Policy had reduced.  However, this had created incidents of obstruction for pedestrians and other users of the public highway and therefore enforcement was to be tightened and increased to ensure compliance with the Policy.  The Area Highway Inspectors regularly monitored A-Boards on the public highway, in the town centre this was carried out fortnightly.  The Inspectors would raise any issues of non-compliance with the business owner in the first instance and they would be told that if there was a repeated, second, offence the A-Board would be removed and taken to the Council’s depot.  A fee equal to one year’s Licence renewal fee, currently £80, would be payable on collection and any Boards not collected after 12 weeks would be scrapped/recycled.  In order to address non-compliance concerns and to continue supporting businesses, amendments/updates to the existing Policy were necessary.  The proposed amendments were as follows:

·         Removal of any ambiguity regarding the siting/location of the ‘A–Board’ on the public highway;

·         Ensuring that the public highway was not obstructed and that the ‘A-Boards’ were sensibly positioned to maintain a clear pathway for all users of the public highway;

·         Agreeing the number of ‘A-Boards’ permitted per applicant;

·         Increasing the application fee and annual renewal fee;

·         Detailing the enforcement action for non-compliance of the ‘A-Board’ Policy;

·         Specifying that the Council’s decision on A-Board applications was final, in its capacity as the Local Highway Authority.

Community, Church and Charity Organisations would still need to apply for the licence for any individual event and the Council would waive the application fee and the terms of the licence would apply.

Finally, the report stated that the Highway Asset Management Board had met in December 2022 and had reviewed the Annual Status Options Report (ASOR) for structures, carriageways and pavements.  The ASORs were an Asset Management Tool and were used by the Council to report on the condition, asset value and future funding requirements of public highway maintainable structures, carriageways and pavement assets.  They were used to calculate future funding requirements to ensure that the assets were maintained in a reasonable and serviceable condition and assisted the Council by targeting available funding to assets in greatest need, thereby extending the life of the asset before it became necessary to carry out more expensive reconstruction.  The updated ASORs would be submitted to a future meeting and would be published later in the year. 

Resolved –

(1)    That the progress of the investigatory level safety defect criteria (potholes) be noted;

(2)     That the updated Policy for the management of Advertising Boards (A-Boards) on the public highway, as set out in Section 4 of the Report, be approved;

(3)     That the update on the Annual Status Options Report (ASOR) be noted.