Agenda and minutes

Councillor Chris Holley was confirmed as Convener of the Service Improvement and Finance Panel for 2023-24.

www.swansea.gov.uk/disclosuresofinterests

There were no disclosures of Personal and Prejudicial Interests.

None.

To receive the minutes of the previous meeting(s) and agree as an accurate record.

      Minutes of the previous meeting were agreed.

Questions can be submitted in writing to Scrutiny scrutiny@swansea.gov.uk up until noon on the working day prior to the meeting. Written questions take precedence. Public may attend and ask questions in person if time allows. Questions must relate to items on the open part of the agenda and will be dealt with in a 10 minute period.

There were no public questions received.

Cllr Andrew Stevens – Cabinet Member for Environment and Infrastructure

Stuart Davies – Head of Highways and Transportation

Bob Fenwick – Group Leader Highways Maintenance

Bob Fenwick and Stuart Davies gave an overview on current arrangements for road repairs. Discussions focussed on following points -

·       Swansea has around 1100 kilometres of carriage way and around 1600 kilometres of footway.

·       The current calculated backlog for carriageways is around £70m and for maintaining a steady state, £7-8m would need to be spent annually.

·       Re naming the PATCH programme is being considered due to potential confusion between routine and planned maintenance repairs.

·       The Council receive around 7-8000 reports a year of potholes.

·       The current pothole pledge goes above statutory obligation and focusses on reports from the public.

·       Surfaces have been damaged over the winter due to marginal temperatures which can damage the top layer. There is an extra programme currently running to deal with this.

·       The planned maintenance programme is controlled by a scoring system that considers engineering, judgement, condition, accidents, the frequency of buses, access, vicinity to schools or hospitals, classification of the road and number of vehicles per day. A backlog has been created due to the winter damage. Around a third of roads in Swansea are on this list.

·       Preventative work is cheaper and provides an extended life span to an existing road and therefore can be more effective. This must be balanced with public demand for repairs.

·       Relationships with contractors remains positive.

·       Future challenges include climate change resulting in more marginal winters, carbon emissions from road resurfacing materials, the increased weight of electric cars and road damage from traffic calming.

·       Pothole repair materials have around a 96% success rate of permanency.

·       When work is carried out, each job is assessed individually to decide if road closure, traffic management, detours etc are required.

·       Welsh Government funds allocations to Counties is based on a standing percentage split.

·       Credit was paid to the work of the road repair teams with other parts of the country also suffering from deteriorating road conditions.

The Chair informed the Panel of a proposed merger of the Serivce Improvement and Finance Scrutiny Panel with the Development and Regeneration Scrutiny Panel. This will be put forward at the next Scrutiny Programme Committee in July and if agreed this would be the last meeting of the Service Improvement and Finance Scrutiny Panel.