Millions of Pounds Needed to Maintain Roads in Vale of Glamorgan

The bill for keeping roads in Vale of Glamorgan could rise by millions of pounds.
At a Vale of Glamorgan Council environment and regeneration scrutiny committee meeting, the local authority’s head of neighbourhood services and transport, Emma Reid, said upwards of £3m is already spent on maintaining highways.
In a discussion on the council’s revenue in quarter two of the financial year, Ms Reid said the highways departments funds are not sufficient for what they need to do.
Chair of the scrutiny committee, councillor Susan Lloyd-Selby, raised a point in the report which states that there is projected overspend of £850,000 in the highways department’s budget in relation to ‘patching’ and pot holes.
Operational manager for accountancy at the council, Gemma Jones, said highways funds have been “significantly short” of the £3m needed to carry out repairs.
Ms Reid said the £3m figure, which came from a council highway asset report published in 2019, is being reviewed by the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS) Wales and is expected it to rise to about £5m.
She added: “The price that we are actually paying for pot holes to be repaired is the same as it was in 2021.
“We secured a good price from that… but because the capital budgets have been restricted, there is less capital going in so the number of pot holes that we have to fill in is more challenging.
“Although you see the overspend there today is going to be around £1.5m… I would say that the £850k has traditionally been overspend and we have been lucky enough to fund that from reserves in the past, but obviously our reserves are dwindling, so we are going to be noticing that budget stay at about £1.5m.
“Even if we do put in more investment next year, which I hope we can, in terms of road resurfacing, that pot hole budget is going to be maintaining at about £1.5m if we retain the current standards that we operate which are similar standards to other authorities in Wales.”
Other key spending pressures that Vale of Glamorgan Council’s highways department faces include payments to HGV drivers (£350,000) and the continuation of ash die back work which requires £200,000 from reserves. ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​