We hope our local Conservatives are embarrassed by the figures below. They darn well ought to be.
This is a league table of the money spent on pothole repairs by Essex County Council by district or borough over the last three financial years:
Braintree:- ?3,570,000
Colchester:- ?3,230,000
Uttlesford:- ?3,100,000
Chelmsford:- ? 2,710,000
Tendring:- ?2,590,000
Epping:- ?2,570,000
Basildon:- ?1,910,000
Maldon:- ?1,890,000
Brentwood:- ?1,440,000
Castle Point:- ? 978,000
Rochford:- ? 920,000
Harlow:- ? 767,000
A127:- ? 605,000
Total ?7.888 million
Or to put it another way: on average, the County Council has only been spending ?3.68 a year on fixing our potholes for every man woman and child living in Rochford District. The same figure for Braintree is ?7.55. If Chris and Pam are elected in may we will be working very hard to improve this.
Thanks for those statistics exactly what I thought ,and why I asked that question earlier .It is a disgrace that the whole of southern Essex is treated like this . It is unfortunate that there is a north south divide but it is so obviously biased towards the “safe County Seats ” in the rural areas .If people can be bothered to vote then we can make a difference and correct the imbalance .
My mum lives in Waltham Road so I use this road when visiting her. The state of it is depressing as it was repaired recently but is now in a worse state than it was before. Although the road is extremely low priority, because of the parking restrictions on all other roads running up to the station, it actually has quite a lot of through traffic on it which doesn’t seem to be taken into account. I can’t see it being repaired for years to come.
Sarah, you are so right.
The last time I was in one of the roads near Waltham (about a month ago?) the surface was already decaying but the signs from last October saying the work was going to be done still hadn’t been removed!
Just to emphasise the point about potholes, here’s the latest fixmystreet today – huge pothole at the top of Hambro Hill:
https://www.onlinefocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/hambro.jpg
The dual carriageway from the A127 slip road to Carpenters Arms roundabout is one mass of potholes, cracked surface, etc. Cars are almost doing a slalom down there it’s got so bad. It’s not a question of reporting just one pot hole there, it’s the whole stretch of road. Needs complete resurfacing.
Christine; I noticed what you are saying on Monday and it appears that when the existing tarmac surface was laid the contractors placed a material membrane of some sort between the old road surface and the new one. This can be seen clearly around the periphery of each pothole and the depth of tarmac is probably no more than 25mm. My guess is that water has penetrated through the surface to this membrane and pooled. It has then frozen forcing the tarmac to lift. It looks like a cheap fix to me!