By Andrew Topping, Local Democracy Reporter
An outside consultant will be brought in to help Nottinghamshire County Council work out how best to repair the county’s broken roads.
Nottinghamshire has some of the most potholed roads in the country.
So it has asked a private consultant and the Local Government Association to help it work out how it could do more to mend them.
The authority has set up a new cross-party highways panel to review the state of Nottinghamshire’s roads and pavements.
Figures between 2017 and 2019 showed more than 250,000 potholes were reported to the council, higher than any other area nationally. It led to calls for a different approach to road maintenance and for new technologies to be explored.
Councillor Neil Clarke (Con), chairman of the new highways panel, told full council on Thursday (July 19): “At this stage, it is more of fact-finding and information-gathering.
“But then we will gradually move into seeing what actions can actually be taken. We have agreed we will be having an outside consultancy, WSP, who will be assisting us.
“We have asked the Local Government Association to help us with a peer review, that will be a critical friend, helping us to look in the mirror at how we perform.
“We will also be arranging to meet other county councils as well, to assess and compare how they do things.”
WSP is a global engineering and professional services company.
The new committee will be visiting Via East Midlands’ depot in Bilsthorpe on Friday (July 23) to view current methods used for road maintenance.
The meeting, Councillor Clarke says, will explore how the council-owned operator of the highway can improve.
He added: “[We will be] looking and exploring at the latest technology, information and different ways of working, on the basis that all options are open at the moment.
“We want this to be a thorough and comprehensive review, and to explore whatever questions possible.
“We want to make sure the way we maintain roads is the most effective way.”
His update came following a question from Councillor David Martin (Ash Ind), who represents Selston.
Cllr Martin asked for information on whether new technologies are being considered as part of the review.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service following the update, Cllr Martin said: “I’d like to thank Councillor Clarke for seemingly taking the concerns raised by independent councillors seriously.
“The state of our broken roads and pavements is still a massive concern for all residents in Nottinghamshire.
“I will be shortly providing a dossier to the council of priority roads that need sorting in Jacksdale, Selston, New Selston and Underwood.”
