10,000 potholes repaired in Hertfordshire this year

In response to the recent harsh winter, Hertfordshire County Council has repaired over 10,000 potholes so far this year as part of a winter recovery programme.

The long periods of wet and cold weather caused a substantial rise in the number of potholes reported to the county council’s highways team.

Now that the winter weather is behind us, the council has now begun its annual surfacing programmes, which will see large sections of road given new surfaces, including preventative maintenance on roads that are close to failure as well as new surfaces for some of the most uneven roads.

This has been enabled by the county council increasing its highways budget for this financial year with a £40 million programme of over 1,000 road maintenance and improvement schemes across Hertfordshire’s 3,000 miles of road.

Rob Smith, deputy director of Environment, said: “Just like other parts of the country, our roads have been badly affected by the repeated periods of freezing weather this winter, leading to potholes forming at an unprecedented rate. We’ve brought in four extra jet patching machines to work alongside our regular crews to get on top of the problem and we’ve now fixed over 10,000 potholes. Despite the significant increase in the number of potholes and road faults reported, we continue to hit our targets of repairing the most urgent potholes within 24 hours and all others which are considered serious within five to 20 working days.”