Road Restructuring: Oxfordshire — House of Commons, 2018-07-18
Topic: Transportation
Robert Alexander Courts (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and the Government have certainly been giving more money to local authorities, which are responsible for repairing the roads—I am sure the Minister will refer to that. I have provided some details of the scale of the problem, which perhaps has a great deal to do with it. We have a very rural area, and it is very adversely affected by weather One point that I have not yet covered, which relates to that raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), is the impact of development and of very heavy lorries. When a housing estate is built, heavy materials such as breeze blocks, girders, bricks and wood have to be brought in on small, narrow roads. There is a lot of development going on in Oxfordshire, which is a growing and economically busy area. That really adds to the scale of the challenge. The bigger the roads, the bigger the trucks and the greater the damage I briefly mentioned the challenge caused by the winter. The snow in December 2017 and further freezes in January and March 2018 have damaged an already fragile network, and it is worth noting that Oxfordshire has a lower proportion of roads assessed as good than the national average, but it also has a lower than average proportion of roads assessed as poor. Although Oxfordshire has a higher than average proportion of roads assessed as fair, fair means five to 15 years of life remaining. That is not a catastrophic state of affairs, but clearly it is an issue that requires a long-term solution I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) for mentioning the work of Oxfordshire County Council. Of course we would like the council to do more, but I would also like us to recognise the work it has been doing, particularly in recent weeks and months, while drawing the House’s attention to the requirement for further works Oxfordshire County Council has 18 crews working on roads in the county, and I understand that is the largest number of crews it has ever used. In the summer it usually has only six crews, so the council is very much aware of the scale of the problem and is working hard to make changes As my hon. Friend rightly said, Oxfordshire owns two dragon patching machines and shares a third with the highway authority. The machines, which are somewhat dramatically named, use hot tarmac to melt and mend potholes. Rather than just filling the potholes, which means the filler often comes out again, the dragon patchers melt and rework the surface, which is more efficient and lasts longer. Of course, it is much cheaper, too—costing about £22 per defect, compared with £80 per defect using the normal cut-and-fill method. That will help, but it only really helps in rural areas because the surrounding tarmac is melted in the process. That rural area is assisted by dragon patchers. Small crews are able to travel across the county to fix holes more quickly and cheaply and to handle traffic management at the same time. All these steps mean that the council has fixed more than 28,000 defects, of which about 23,000 were potholes, since January 2018. We are talking about potholes, drains and damaged signs.