Lancashire County Council has unveiled a £20m programme of investment to support vital transport infrastructure.
The fund will be considered the council’s cabinet and includes spending on roads, streetlights, and bridges over the next 12 months.
Almost £12m of that sum is earmarked for resurfacing roads and preventing potholes appearing, with the county’s highways teams already carrying out patching work in preparation to start resurfacing as soon as Spring appears.
This, the council says, adds to “significant resources” already made available to the its highways teams to ensure they can make timely repairs to potholes throughout the year.
More than £4.2m of this sum is proposed for bringing residential roads into good condition, including over £200k for resurfacing Hargreaves Road and surrounding streets in Oswaldtwistle, more than £100k for a section of Grafton Street in Pendle, £112k to renew part of Levens Drive in Morecambe, and £130k to resurface a section of Waterbarn Street in Burnley.
A total of £2m has been allocated to Lancashire’s busiest A, B and C roads, including over £220k for maintaining the A587 Rossall Road/Broadway between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, more than £228k to resurface part of the B5248 North Road in Chorley, and over 198k to improve a stretch of the A5085 Blackpool Road in Preston.
Around £2m has been set aside to improve rural routes, with a further £350,000 proposed for rural ‘moss roads’ in West Lancashire and Wyre which need special maintenance due to the wet and peaty ground they’re built upon. £750k is also set to be invested in keeping pavements safe and tidy.
The highways capital programme is revealed in a new report to the county council’s cabinet which meets on Thursday, March 3. It also includes £3.5m for maintenance to bridges and other vital structures such as retaining walls, £1m for repairs to streetlights, £600,000 to upgrade traffic signals and £1m for roadside safety barriers. A further £500,000 will be invested in improving drainage, helping to protect our roads from Lancashire’s wet weather.
The report outlines that the county council will be saving 267 tonnes of carbon by using recycled rather than new materials to maintain roads where appropriate, which is equivalent to taking 116 cars off the road for a year.
The proposed highways programme is based on a conservative estimate of an assumed level of funding from the Department for Transport, and a further round of investment may be presented to cabinet once the allocation is confirmed. Lancashire expects to receive the higher ‘band 3’ level of funding available to councils which can show they use the DfT’s recommended approach to maintenance based on the principle that ‘prevention is better than cure’.
