More than £8m to be invested in repairing Wigan's roads

Wigan Council has tendered the first phase of its highways schemes for 2019/2020, valued at £1.3m.

The successful contractors, Hopkins and Tarmac, are expected to start on site at the end of March.

At the latest full council meeting, leader Coun David Molyneux announced that the authority will invest an additional £3.3m of council funding in repairing the roads, topping up the £5.1m received in government capital funding.

At the meeting, the leader said he knew that the condition of the borough’s roads and repairing potholes were a concern for local people.

The council currently maintains around 1,160km of roads and spends around £1m on fixing around 13,000 highway minor defects, including potholes, each year. It also manages 2,000km of footway, 58,000 drainage gullies and 36,500 street lights.

This time of year is historically one of the worst for new craters, because of cold spells and salt spreading – which haven’t been much in evidence this winter – and the pounding the ground gets from torrential downpours, which have.

The authority publishes its annual planned highways carriageway and footway programmes of work on its website so residents can view which locations have been prioritised for repair.

Coun Molyneux said: “It is great to see work starting immediately to repair our roads. We know how important the roads are to residents and we have a long-term plan to maintain them. In

The Deal 2030 consultation you told you wanted the roads to be in a good condition and we’re listening to that.

“It is always difficult after winter because the roads get damaged in the bad weather but this extra £3.3m will mean we can repair the roads quickly and efficiently.”

Engineers always prefer to resurface an entire section rather than simply patch a hole because the latter will soon disintegrate again.

Residents can report a pothole to the council via the Report It app or www.wigan.gov.uk/reportit