Wirral pothole repair cash condemned as a 'sticking plaster'




The Government’s cash allocation towards easing Wirral’s pothole misery has been basted by Labour leader Steve Foulkes, who claimed it was like “putting a small sticking plaster over a gaping wound.”

The Merseyside region will share £3,485,980 of Department of Transport funding with Liverpool getting the lion’s share of £1,058,774. Wirral will receive £625,931.
Cllr Foulkes said: “The Labour Government allocated far more funding following a winter which wasn’t half as bad as the last one which was the worst in living memory for most people.

“Local authorities have been targetted for savage cuts and this is like putting a small sticking plaster over a gaping wound.

"We must now try to get value for a very small amount by making sure the worst areas are repaired first.”

Sefton will get an allocation of £613,026, St Helen’s will receive £484.076; Knowsley £355,731 and Halton £348,440.

But in Liverpool alone the backlog of work is estimated to be around £160m.

The city council’s regeneration and transport cabinet member Cllr Malcolm Kennedy said: “During horrendous winters roads contract and expand and it cracks the surface.

"We end up running fast just to stand still.”

Announcing the funding transport secretary Philip Hammond said: “Millions of motorists across the country have their daily lives ruined by potholes.

"I am determined to see the winter damage to our roads fixed as quickly as possible and we will be working with councils to make sure this happens.”

THE GLOBE

If they had used the money on potholes instead of the signage on Brimstage rd/Whitehouse lane, changing the national 60mph to a signed 50mph then they could have used it for some of the potholes, but the all get out of problems is "Road Safety" how dropping from 60 mph to 50 mph is going to make the road safe is a joke as some parts doing 40mph is dangerous.

I'm sure there would be a great saving if they went round BEFORE winter sealing cracks with bitumen instead of wait for the frost to expand them into potholes.

But with these days of most work being contracted-out, its impractical to define that sort of work in a mutually agreeable contract.

And those LED 'slow down signs' are a complete waste of time and money.

What if we were to actually spend some of the Road Tax, on the roads? (HAHAHAHA!!!! wouldn't than be a novel idea!!)

Roads tax goes up....work on roads goes down....I dont understand it.

How about more stringent quality control inspectors on contractors who surface the roads? These councillors are thick as pig shit.

Ah, but they didn't used to give you window benefit when they were charging Window Tax. The name of a tax only indicates the way it is calculated or collected, not what it is to be spent on, all types of tax go to central funding.

Yeah they also give you away to the police if they're further down the road behind you

Yes thought this my self bud.....very sneeky arnt they. Entrapment is a twaat.

Most of them go off even when you are not doing over the limit. For example the one on King Street by the BP petrol station, goes off when I'm doing 30 on the speedo, which is closer to 28MPH when measured by the satnav.

+1

To be fair to the council, I reported the state of a local road to Streetscene, telling the girl on the phone I'd seen better roads in Beirut. She told me the road was scheduled for resurfacing within 12 months but they would send out a crew to take a look and do temporary repairs if necessary.

She was as good as her word. They'd filled in the worst holes within a week and returned to do the rest within another week.

I followed up with a letter to Lesley Rennie, who is the councillor responsible for Streetscene complaining about the amount of money being spent on the silly speed indicator signs and the proliferation of "1 million accidents in this location" signs when road safety would have been far better served by, you know, actually making the roads safe to drive on. Did I get a reply? Did I buggery.

We had to have the bushes and arms redone on ouR Pt cruiser because we fell into the massive pothole that comes just before the bridge by the recycling center That road must be one of the worst in Wirral. sometimes it looks like a car slalom course with regulars snaking round all the deep potholes. Oops, i must say looked because apparently the council filled in a few of the deeper ones this week

They are actualy capable of counting the no of cars that dont slow down thus telling the police what roads to watch but if we all stuck to speed limits it would not be a problem

It was originally intended to be a "Road Fund", the tax disc even used to be called the "Road Fund Licence" didn't it? The problem was they soon realized that this was a nice big pot of easy money and decided they should be allowed to spend it on other far more important things than what it was originally intended for. Wikipedia has:
"...a new excise duty specifically for motor vehicles was introduced in 1920 which was paid into the Road Fund and was hypothecated for road construction. Since 1937 the money has gone into central government revenues and has not been used directly to fund road building or maintenance."