A whopping £500 million will be spent to fix Calderdale's roads

The Council’s Cabinet last night (Monday) agreed to endorse the overall Highways and Capital Programmes for 2018-19, an essential requirement of its status as a level three highway asset management authority, which brings with it extra Government cash for some schemes.

READ: Ambitious plans to improve Calderdale’s road networkCabinet member for Regeneration and Economic Strategy, Councillor Barry Collins (Lab, Illingworth and Mixenden) proposed the measured be approved and added: “Up to 2022 we are investing just over half a billion pounds on the infrastructure of the borough.”

READ: Work on Salterhebble Hill will be completed early next yearIt took in everything from the flood resilience programmes, highways, footways and drainage to highway maintenance from top to bottom of the borough, he said.

“The paper sets out how we plan to spend the available money we have on potholes, drainage work, surface patching and road improvement schemes over the next two years.”

Work to start in 2019 on smart motorway scheme from Brighouse to RochdaleHe asked members to consider the “sheer enormity” of it and urged every councillor to ask officers for more information about what would be going on in their area.

At July’s full council meeting Coun Sophie Whittaker (Con, Rastrick) had asked what was being done for her ward which had a number of highway problems including potholed roads.

The detail of these schemes revealed a range of measures for Rastrick’s roads were to be undertaken and there was even the possibility of a new motorway junction at Rastrick. Every ward would see work scheduled, for example 30 schemes in Ryburn, said Coun Collins.

He said having recently left its relationship with contractor Amey, a private company, Calderdale was now seeing the benefit of work being delivered in-house and using local contractors, providing work for local people.

Because the council was doing things more efficiently it was able to bid, sometimes through the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, for national pots of money, for example £1.3 million for a road safety scheme at Pecket Well.

Another had realised £900,000 towards drainage – as a level three authority Government had rewarded Calderdale with £611,000 extra for the purpose, he said.