Buckinghamshire County Council boss: pothole work won't make 'huge difference' (From Bucks Free Press)

Buckinghamshire County Council boss: pothole work won't make 'huge difference'

2:55pm Wednesday 10th March 2010 in

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Watch our video about the types of potholes teams are tackling.

VIDEO: Drivers will not 'see a huge difference’ to Buckinghamshire’s ailing roads from a surge in pothole repair work, a council boss has said.

Eric Meek, area manager south for Buckinghamshire County Council’s transport department, spoke after £2m was found to repair potholes left by the recent snow.

The number of teams have been more than doubled and there also two ‘plane and patch’ gangs to resurface whole sections of road.

Yet Mr Meek said: “I don’t think the public will see a huge difference from the pothole gangs.

“Where we will find you notice the difference is with the big plane and patch areas where we are doing much larger areas.”

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Teams are only doing a full job with the most severe ‘category one’ potholes, by cutting a square or rectangle around holes before filling them.

But less serious ‘category two’ potholes are being filled in without cutting – and these are ‘bursting out’ in the wet, Mr Meek said.

This is ‘causing us the real problem’ he said. Bosses say teams do not have time to cut all holes – but said they will be back to fill them properly.

Teams have repaired 12,000 category one pothole repairs since January. In a typical year about 5,000 potholes are filled, BCC said.

In recent months to council has introduced a paperless computer system which bosses say is speeding up repairs.

This includes workers taking pictures of potholes on handheld PDA devices for a database, which also receive new jobs reported by the public.

Vehicles are also tracked by satellite – and some have been reprimanded for speeding, Mr Meek said. Chiefs are automatically sent an email if a vehicle speeds.

He said: “Everybody was a bit wary about what is going on but they realise it is not really a big brother system.”

Read our pothole stories below.