£36m price tag to bring Calderdale's roads up to scratch

Around four per cent of Calderdale’s “A” roads should be considered for maintenance, councillors have been told, at a cost of £1.5 million.

Members of Calderdale Council’s Strategy and Performance Scrutiny Board were told the condition of “A” roads needing repair was within its target of five per cent and has been so for the last five years.

The condition of Calderdale’s roads is one of five of 15 annual super key performance indicators which the council considers annually.

Councillors heard a road condition survey was carried out annually to produce the result.

It showed that Calderdale’s “A” road network was 149 km long and six kilometres required urgent maintenance at a cost of £1.5 million.

In terms of unclassified roads, maintenance should be considered on around 146km of 861km of road at a cost of about £35 million.

Put into context, “A” roads cover around 13 per cent of Calderdale’s road network. “B” and “C” roads cover another 11 per cent (120km) while unclassified roads are by far the largest portion, at 76 per cent of the network.

Calderdale is within its target for managing “A” roads and aims to tackle ten per cent of unclassified roads.

This means it needs to invest more money into the bunclassified road system, councillors heard.

The council is looking at additional capital funding to increase its ability to carry out road repairs and will include road maintenance in major capital programme schemes.

Four additional road gangs have also been deployed to carry out small maintenance programmes for the next six months on areas of road badly affected over the winter.