Report ES18020

Following the Council’s decision on 12^th December 2016 to approve capital funding of £11.8m for investment in planned highway maintenance, Members considered planned schemes for the final phase (Phase 5) of the investment project. Works associated with the first four phases of the project had progressed well, and current commitments/expenditure at February 2018 totalled £7.74m for carriageways and £2.46m for footways.

Improving the condition of the borough’s non-principal and unclassified roads and footways would reduce reactive maintenance and enable annual revenue savings of £2.5m, totalling £12.5m over a five-year period from 2017/18 (partly offset by an estimated £167k reduction in treasury management income over the period).

Priorities for initial phases were based on a condition survey completed in October 2015 and a further borough-wide assessment recently commissioned identified carriageways and footways needing repair. Schemes for Phase 5 (estimated cost value at £1.6m) were identified as highest priorities in the latest survey results.

Any on-going maintenance would be funded from the revenue budgets for routine and reactive highway maintenance budgets, as and when required.

The investment project was originally anticipated to complete by April 2019 using existing highway maintenance contracts. As the existing contacts would now end in June 2018 following a changed procurement strategy for the new contracts, a capital spend profile of up to 80% carriageways and 20% footways was approved to complete the project using the existing highways contractors as far as possible.

Although London boroughs as Highway Authorities are responsible for maintaining the Borough Principal Road Network (BPRN), planned maintenance of the network is funded by Transport for London (TfL). However, due to reduced Government revenue grant from 2018/19 and a fall in passenger numbers for public transport, TfL notified boroughs that investment in proactive planned renewals on the BPRN and TfL Road Network (TLRN) would pause from 2018/19 to 2019/20. Although the highway investment project had successfully improved the condition of non-principal and unclassified roads, future planned maintenance of the roads was also paused until 2022/23 as part of the project’s business case. The network condition would therefore deteriorate with increased demand for reactive repairs; as such, BPRN maintenance would be limited to reactive works and localised patching until funding is available for planned maintenance.    

In discussion, Members were advised that Lansdowne Avenue, Orpington, and Morley Close, Orpington, had been added to the proposed list of Phase 5 schemes. In view of TfL’s investment pause for the Principal Road Network, it was possible to use alternative funding sources to continue works at Beckenham High Street e.g. TfL funding for other projects.  

RESOLVED that the Environment Portfolio Holder be recommended to:

(1)  agree that the schemes listed at Appendix ‘A’ to Report ES18020 form the next phase of the Council’s investment programme of planned highway maintenance for 2017/19; and

(2)  note the reduction in TfL funding for maintenance of the Borough Principal Road Network.