ROAD repairs in Barnsley have been delayed by months because the council gave priority to streets used for this year’s Tour de Yorkshire race through the town, an engineer has admitted.
Councillors in the Penistone district have been exasperated by quality of repairs to potholed roads in the area, with the work lasting no more than hours in some cases, they have insisted.
Now they have been told by Barnsley Council’s principal engineer for highways maintenance, Steve Croft: “A lot of work at the start of this financial year was work identified for Tour de Yorkshire.”
The practicality of that meant work to resurface Huddersfield Road in Penistone, the main route into the town for high sided lorries which cannot negotiate the rail bridges on other routes, has now been pushed back until October.
The ‘beast from the east’ meant the work could not be done before April and by then the focus was on the routes for the cycle racers, including Upper Sheffield Road near the town centre and Sheffield Road at Hoyland Common.
Mr Croft told Penistone Town Council: “The road (Huddersfield Road) deteriorated rapidly in February and March and that weather continued for several weeks and it was hardly conducive to doing repairs.
“In terms of Huddersfield Road, we tried to get a resurfacing job done towards the back end of the last financial year but it wasn’t possible.
“The weather just went on and on. It rolled over into this financial year and is programmed for the October half term. A lot of work at the start of this financial year was work identified for Tour de Yorkshire.”
Mr Croft said work to fill potholes could fail in winter where water got into the surface, froze and pushed the asphalt back out.
Coun Steve Marsh said: “From the public’s point of view, it doesn’t do you any good when you see a couple of blokes turn up in a lorry, chuck some asphalt in and pat it down. Within an hour or two it is back out.”
Mr Croft also told councillors the authority is moving to a new system of checking roads and footpaths in the autumn, moving from a system which relies on regular checks most frequent for A and B roads to identify problems, to a more flexible system which allows council staff to take a ‘risk based’ approach.
For serious problems, repairs could be carried out as quickly as within two hours, though longer timescales are likely for less critical problems.
It is also possible that a second team of road repairers could be established by the council, though that is complicated by the need to hire in the plant equipment for them to use.
Budgets for highways maintenance had been in decline since the turn of the century, he said, though finances had begun to flatten out in 2015 and were now beginning to rise.
Cabinet spokesman, Coun Roy Miller, said: “Weather conditions prevented resurfacing before April, while pothole repairs continued as required. To minimise disruption to Penistone Grammar School, resurfacing is scheduled to take place during the next available school holiday period in October.
“Many of the roads along the Tour de Yorkshire route had already been identified for planned works in 2018/19; it would be misleading to suggest that this affected or delayed works in Penistone or other areas.”
