Local residents have been praised for doing their bit to keep Swindon’s roads in a safe condition.
It comes as Swindon Borough Council announced it had carried out a total of 10,230 pothole repairs last year.
In order to keep on top of defects in the Borough’s roads, the Council relies on local residents to report potholes via its website.
The Council will receive an additional £1.5m from the Government to repair potholes for the next financial year and, last year, budgeted £2m for day-to-day highways maintenance, including reactive pothole repairs (£170,000) and all other maintenance work related to roads, pavements and cycle paths.
A further £2m was also set aside for proactive road resurfacing work.
Continuing to work with limited resources, it is estimated that it would cost the Council more than £140m to get all of the roads across Swindon to a ‘like new’ condition. The Council therefore has to prioritise the money it does have on those roads that are in urgent need of repair.
Potholes and other defects are also identified by the Council’s team of five highway inspectors who regularly check the Borough’s entire highway network, which includes 522 miles of roads and all 646 miles of paths/pavements and 76 miles of cycle paths at least once a year.
These potholes are risk assessed and those that pose a very high level of safety risk are completed within one working day. All other pothole repairs are completed within 30 working days, with the majority completed within ten working days. Other defects may be programmed for a longer period of repair of up to six weeks.
With some exceptions, all repairs are considered permanent at the time of completion. Swindon’s roads are often very busy, with thousands of cars using a single road every day, so general wear and tear will impact the stability of the pothole and the road itself.
Sometimes, a particularly deep pothole will create additional problems to the road surface around it, so the team will fix the initial hole and programme a patch to this section of the road at a later date.
Councillor Chris Watts, Cabinet Member for the Environment and Transport, explained why permanent pothole repairs may not last. He said: “I’d like to thank every resident who reported a pothole in 2024, and our pothole team for their hard work in maintaining our roads.
“Ideally, we would have the resources to shut the road and complete resurfacing at every opportunity, but traffic management requirements and limited financial resources means we are unable to do so. That does mean that it is sometimes necessary to repair a road more than once.
“It is therefore especially important that residents continue to support us by reporting road defects on the Council’s website.
“We continue to invest in improving the condition of local roads, and I am pleased that our highways team are carrying out important repair work at nine locations across the Borough in the coming weeks.”
Residents can find out more about the latest roadworks and diversions by searching ‘roadworks’ on the Council’s website. Answers to Frequently Answered Questions about road repairs can also be found by searching ‘potholes.’