Macclesfield Central Councillor Digs into Cheshire East's Pothole Problem
By Alex Greensmith 24th Jun 2021
Councillor Ashley Farrall: Let's talk about everyone's favourite pet peeve, potholes and the general state of our roads.
This is something as a Councillor takes up far too much of my time.
The time I'd much rather spent among other things working with our local community groups, helping local businesses, working on post-COVID recovery and regeneration, working on plans to improve our town centre, public open spaces and our parks or as Armed Forces champion helping veterans with their needs such as finding accommodation.
After all, I wasn't elected to be a road inspector or engineer.
However, I go out and take pictures of roads, report them, re-report them, check them when Highways claim they're resolved, then re-re-report them again when they aren't or done have been done shoddily! Until they are done.
But did you know that Cheshire East highways maintenance isn't performed by the Council itself?
No, the Conservatives while in power, decided to privatise this service (in their infinite wisdom) and in 2018 gave an eye-watering 15 year contract to private firm Ringway Jacobs.
The best part is they get to inspect their work themselves, providing the Council with annual reports of their stats.
So unfortunately there isn't a great deal we can do to hold them to account other than to keep taking pictures and reporting, maybe the stats will show that Ringway Jacobs are not pulling their weight.
The next review is in September so please help by taking pictures of potholes etc and report them via the Cheshire East, or Fixmystreet national or Cheshire East websites.
That said, it's not entirely Ringway Jacobs fault because we get a nice double whammy with the Government cutting Cheshire East highway's maintenance budget by 21% and because of this the Council can not afford to even maintain the roads in their current state, never mind to improve them overall.
Here are the figures
Central Government
Department for Transport (DfT)2020-2021 £19,002,000
2021-2022 £15,051,000Change -£3,951,000
Percentage Change -21%
2020-2021 £1,700,000
2021-2022 £3,000,000Change £1,300,000
Percentage Change +76% Budget Total2020-2021 £20,702,000
2021-2022 £18,051,000Change -£2,651,000
Percentage Change -17% Source Ashley Farrall is a Labour Councillor, representing Macclesfield Central on Cheshire East Council. You can contact him here.
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