A brand new £1million a year Highways Stewards service is set to change the way Cumbria’s road network is looked after.
Cumbria County Council’s Draft Budget agreed by Cabinet today earmarks an extra million pounds a year to pay for the service, which will see Highways Stewards on the ground across the county working closely with local communities.
The plan is create 25 Highways Stewards who are trained and equipped to tackle small but important repair and maintenance work on roads, gullies, road signs and verges etc. They will also be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the overall highways service, helping to identify larger jobs that need doing.
Each of the stewards would be responsible for a certain length of road and would work closely with their communities, parish councils and other authorities within their patch so they can respond to local demand.
Stewards will link in with the new high-tech Operational Control Room in Skirsgill, where the latest satellite and mapping technology allows Cumbria Highways to efficiently direct its resources on the county’s 7,700km road network.
The link with the OCR service, which runs around the clock, 365 days a year, means that Highways Stewards will have the back-up of the multi-million pound highways response services.
As well as the four Emergency Response Teams covering very urgent repairs and emergency call outs, there are six new Highways Response Teams (HRTs) - one for each district.
These new HRTs have already been assigned a rolling work programme which will see the teams spending three to ten day periods, twice a year, in each and every parish.
On top of that, two new Permanent Repair Teams will be on call to make permanent hot bituminous pothole repairs.
The new Highways Stewards will have a key role working with communities at a very local level to identify what needs doing, to tackle the issues they can manage on their own and to draft in the right help where required.
The Highways Steward’s role, which is similar to the old position of parish ‘lengthsman’, has recently been trialled as pilot schemes running in South Lakeland and Allerdale where they have proved effective and popular.
Ian Stewart, Cumbria County Council cabinet member responsible for highways, said:
“The £1million a year investment in the Highways Stewards will be a major step forward for the upkeep of the county’s roads and neighbourhoods. People tell us that they want us to pay more attention and spend more money making sure that small jobs in their areas are tackled more effectively - that is exactly what we are doing.
“The Highways Stewards will be there as a visible presence on the ground in communities working on exactly that. They will be ready and able to do plenty of those small but important jobs that matter to communities such as keeping signs up to scratch, tackling drainage work, gully clearing, dealing with weeds, verges, hedges and doing some temporary road surface repairs. But they will also work with the 12 newly restructured highways team to make sure that bigger problems are dealt with promptly and permanently first time.
“We know that Highways Stewards will prove very popular and effective and that people will soon really see a difference in their areas.”
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Media enquiries to Gareth Cosslett, News Manager on 01228 606332
Notes
Cumbria Highways is the partnership between Cumbria County Council, Amey Infrastructure Services and Capita Symonds.
Cumbria County Council is the Highway Authority responsible for some 7,700km of roads. Trunk roads and motorways in the county are looked after by the Highways Agency.
The county council’s combined capital and revenue budget for highways in 2007/8 was around £45million.