Nottinghamshire's highways team says getting the county's roads to perfect condition will be like "turning an oil tanker" amid a potential increase in potholes due to cold weather. Those responsible for maintaining Nottinghamshire's roads and carrying out repairs have also issued a plea for the public to be respectful following incidents of staff being verbally abused.
The Met Office has put a yellow weather warning for snow in place across parts of north Nottinghamshire on Thursday (March 9). Nottinghamshire's highways team say they will be "extra vigilant" in terms of emergency repairs during the predicted cold weather.
Wayne Prince is the highways inspection and risk manager for Via East Midlands, which manages Nottinghamshire's roads on behalf of the county council. Mr Prince said: "We're anticipating an increased level of safety defects appearing that are going to need to be repaired to keep the highway safe.
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"Defects appear instantly overnight for us and we've got to keep the roads safe. You get dampness below the surface layer and as the weather gets colder, the water expands leading up to freezing.
"That pushes the Tarmac up and creates the pothole. Once that has happened at locations like a junction, you've got the car wheels pulling away from the junction and that will rapidly increase the level of damage.
"We will see an increase in reports, which we're happy to receive from members of the public using the highway. The guys are ready for it coming, but it will be a massive increase in workload they possibly have this week."
The issue of potholes on Nottinghamshire's roads has proved controversial in recent months, with some opposition members of Nottinghamshire County Council using recent meetings to read out lists of roads in their areas where repairs were needed. But the county's highways team say they "can't be everywhere at once".
In terms of inspecting roads, the team of 17 inspectors in Nottinghamshire have a hierarchy which sees carriageways such as the A614, B-roads and some high street roads having monthly inspections. There are then roads that are inspected on a quarterly basis and those that are routinely inspected every year.
But alongside the routine inspections, the team responsible will go out to an area if reports have come in about road damage from members of the public. Nottinghamshire Live went out with the inspections team on Tuesday (March 7) in Hucknall.
The team had received reports of potholes on some streets in the area and were examining the damage to look at what repairs were required. For potholes posing a danger to road users, an emergency repair is carried out within 24 hours and another team will come out in some cases to look at whether more large-scale patchwork or resurfacing is needed beyond the emergency repair.
The main options when it comes to repairing roads in Nottinghamshire begins with a simple surface dressing, followed by large-scale patchwork or a full resurface, as well as emergency repairs when required. The large-scale patchwork is an option that has only been available to the highways team for around two years and is one of the key reasons why the county council is reporting a drop of around 60% in emergency repairs.
But Councillor Neil Clarke, cabinet member for transport and environment at Nottinghamshire County Council, said restoring Nottinghamshire's roads to a near-perfect condition would be a "long-term" effort. He said: "The ambition is that the public will eventually see far more large patch repairs, rather than a patchwork quilt of small potholes.
"There will always be an emergency pothole repair somewhere so I'm not trying to claim pothole repairs will be eliminated completely, because that's impossible. We've had a backlog of repairs over many years, when we took over six years ago there was a backlog of £150 million in terms of repairs required."
Cllr Clarke says this backlog is being gradually reduced by increased productivity and efficiency in the highways team. Gary Wright, senior highways inspector at Via East Midlands, said one of the key positives was having inspectors constantly working in the same area so they acquire local knowledge on the roads that need prioritising in terms of repairs.
But speaking about the long-term nature of the project, highways inspection and risk manager Mr Prince said: "I often say that getting Nottinghamshire's roads to perfect condition will be like turning an oil tanker, it certainly isn't going to be overnight."
As work continues on repairing Nottinghamshire's roads, Mr Prince also issued a plea for the public to be respectful of highways staff amid some incidents of staff being verbally abused. Mr Prince said: "We've had people shouting abuse up at the team who are inspecting, telling them they don't know what they are doing and that they should do a proper job.
"The teams are more than happy to explain the strategy, the way we work and why we do what we do. We fully sympathise with the members of the public in terms of why they get angry about these things.
"But we have to work in line with the timescales and programming to get on to those bigger repairs. It brought morale down a little but, but the teams do their best not to take it personally.
"If you approach them in the right manner and speak to them, they'll happily chat away with you about what they're doing. They'll give you five or ten minutes of their time, no problem at all."
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