Council to improve 43,200 square metres of road this spring

Cheshire West and Chester Council has published details of additional highways maintenance schemes funded by the Department for Transport’s Network North (HS2) grant.

These will be completed as well as its existing maintenance schedule.

In October last year, the Government announced additional highways maintenance funding over the period 2023/2024 and the next 10 years for local road resurfacing and wider maintenance activity on the local network.

For Cheshire West and Chester Council this amounts to £1.262m of additional funding for the current financial year, and £1.262m for 2024/25.

The schemes to be funded through the additional DfT Network North (HS2) grant, have been chosen in line with the Council’s asset management policy, strategically managing the life cycle of road surfaces.

Full details of the schemes are available here: 

Council’s website

Although schemes have been confirmed for 2023/24 and will be delivered by the end of March 2024, full feasibility and scoping has not taken place for the 2024/25 programme. These schemes will be assessed and confirmed at the start of the new financial year.

The Council’s Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport and Highways, Councillor Karen Shore said:

“The next few months will be an incredibly busy time for our Highways Service.  These additional schemes will be completed on top of the existing works we had planned.

“By the end of March this additional funding has helped our teams resurface a total of 43,200 square metres of road carriageway in the borough.”

Teams will be using some innovative products and machinery to carry out these schemes.  For example, a vehicle which uses a dual-fuel system which injects hydrogen into the engine to displace up to 40% of diesel fuel, making significant CO₂ savings. 

Plus, a cold ‘recycling’ method is also being used to reconstruct carriageway or footway in-situ, as well as ‘Rejuvopatch’, an innovative product which allows repairs to quickly take place across large areas, minimising disruption in busy locations.

Councillor Shore added:

“Unfortunately, this time of year is always busy due to the formation of potholes due to wet and cold weather impacting any road surface, whether relatively new or old.  We’re doing all we can to ensure as much of the road network is repaired and running as smoothly as possible this spring and have deployed extra teams to work specifically on pothole repairs.” 

Potholes are caused when water seeps through cracks in the road caused by passing vehicles.  During periods of extreme cold, the water freezes and expands. This causes more cracks to form in the road; the asphalt is then pushed out like a bubble. 

The ice thaws and milder weather dries up all the water and creates a hole under the surface of the road.  This gets larger every time water seeps into the hole, freezes and expands.

With the base weakened, the weight of traffic causes the road surface to collapse into the hole that was formed from water freezing, expanding and thawing under the surface.  A pothole is formed once the road surface has collapsed; wear from traffic then makes the hole bigger.

This is not always a lengthy process either, under the right conditions potholes can develop very quickly, sometimes in as little as 24 hours.

Quarterly updates will be reported on the Council’s website once approved by the Department for Transport as per grant requirements. Once confirmation of future allocations is received, Cheshire West and Chester will produce a long-term plan for the full 11-year funding increase.

Schemes to be delivered in the current financial year:

Schemes to be delivered in 2024/25:

Carriageway Surfacing is the full replacement of the surface course of a road. The old material will be removed and replaced with a new layer of asphalt. 

Enhanced Patching is the targeted replacement of surface course material. This will be used on sites with only localised failure of the carriageway.

Surface Treatment involves overlaying a protective thin layer on a road to seal and protect an otherwise structurally sound area of carriageway. Often there will be limited patching works to bring an area to a condition where surface treatments can be utilised.