Fear of significant number of potholes after roads stressed by heat
Wiltshire Council says the scale of the impact wont be seen until the winter
There's worry at Wiltshire Council that there could be a significant rise in the number of potholes appearing on our roads in the coming winter due to the summers high temperatures.
The authority tackled thousands of road defects earlier this year when the roads were lashed with rain and hit with freezing conditions.
But the heat can also stress the surface, causing expansion which leads to cracks. However, as Cabinet Member for Highways, Cllr Martin Smith said, these issues can take time to become apparent.
"These weaknesses can become more problematic when the roads are exposed to the wetter and colder conditions later on in the year, particularly during the winter," he said. "So the impact of the summer's weather is really only going to become apparent in January and February 2027. So it is a concern."
He described weather as "the biggest challenge for roads", with many rural roads, such as C-roads, stemming from old cart tracks, and lack the deep foundations that major routes have, such as the A350 in Chippenham, where the foundations are over a metre deep.
Cllr Smith said there is a major focus on preventative action for road surfaces, which includes surface dressing, resurfacing and patching with the Bobcat machines.
He told us the scheduled maintenance programme is "in full swing" and that the dressing technique can significantly boost the lifespan of a road surface.
"If we can do that in good time, we can put off the extra expense of a complete resurfacing job, which is obviously an efficient use of taxpayers' money," Cllr Smith said.
Funding security helping planning
Cllr Smith said the planning of road resurfacing works requires "careful planning over several years" and sustained funding from Government.
He described the move by the Department for Transport to tell the authority what its annual funding allocations for road maintenance would be until 2029 as helpful.
He said long-term certainty is "the key issue" and means the council can begin strategically planning how it's going to look after a large road network.
"We've also putting in money from our own funds to sort of beef up that amount that we've got to play with," he added. "So it's really trying to spend as much on preventative maintenance as possible as opposed to the reactive maintenance, which obviously we have to do during the winter when the potholes form for safety reasons."
Cllr Smith said the council's budget for road works has more than doubled since 2021, when the authority was spending less than £20 million per year on road care. From April next year, that figure will be nearly £44 million, and almost £50 in the years following.