Home » Calls for urgent action and increased investment amid Denbighshire road deterioration

Calls for urgent action and increased investment amid Denbighshire road deterioration

DENBIGHSHIRE’S potholed roads could soon become “donkey tracks” without urgent investment, fear concerned councillors.

At a council meeting at Ruthin ’s County Hall HQ this week, several councillors raised their concerns about the state of Denbighshire ’s roads whilst discussing a capital plan for the next financial year.

The council was discussing how much the highways department would receive as a “block allocation” of funds.

Cllr Merfyn Parry slammed the state of the county’s roads, pointing to the fact that investment in highways would be reduced.

“It looks like the funding for 2025/26 is £2.7m. It’s a reduction from £3.24m,” he said.

“We’ve got work that has been put back over the years with budget pressures, and obviously you’ve got an inflation cost of some of the work that needs to be done, so that puts an additional pressure on those figures on you, so we have to be clear on those.

“It (the report) stresses we are relying on the Welsh Government to get grants to do some of this work.

“As a rural member, I’m driving around, and the roads are crumbling in front of me just coming to Ruthin every day, and we need to have a serious consideration of what we do with our highways because if we let them go back much further, we’ll have donkey tracks around our county very quickly.

“They (the roads) are in a mess.

“Winter has given them a hard time now.

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“When we come to clearing that up and putting a road sweeper on these roads – if we ever had a road sweeper to do it – we are going to have problems.”

He added: “If we don’t put investment in these roads in the next 12 months, the amount of money is going to be an awful lot more than just £2.7m.”

Cllr Gwynerth Ellis then said she sympathised with Cllr Parry as a rural member, but added it was important that the council kept costs down; otherwise, it would need to borrow additional funds.

Chief executive Graham Boase then said: “We are quietly confident that the noises coming out of Welsh Government are that there will be specific funding for highway maintenance, but until we’ve got the money, we haven’t got it.

“All the indications are in the next couple of weeks, they are talking about a funding regime for at least 2025/26, possibly in the second year as well, and it’s fairly significant funding.

“So we keep our fingers crossed on that, but all the indications are that it is going to be coming.”

Cllr Brian Jones then asked if Denbighshire had a concrete figure of funds needed to bring the roads to a statutory standard.

Cllr Barry Mellor, the cabinet member responsible for roads, said: “It is almost impossible to do (to give a figure).

“What I can say is that the team go around on a weekly if not more than a weekly basis, looking at the road structures.”

Cllr Mellor then said several roads had been dealt with as an emergency recently.

“I might get called (out) for this, but I go around a number of places, and you want to go driving through Chester,” said Cllr Mellor.

“Our roads are not as bad as what people think.

“They do need money spending, but they are not as bad as a lot of councils around here.

“But the question Brian (Cllr Jones) has asked, it would be impossible to work that out.”

The chief executive agreed that the council didn’t have an exact overall figure of the cost.

Cllr Chris Evans then said: “The people who go around looking at the roads, they want to come to my ward because they are atrocious, the country roads going up to Marian Cwm.”

Cllr Bobby Feeley asked: “Is there a fully costed list of road maintenance required in order of urgency so that when Welsh budget for roads is allocated, we can commence without delay?

“And I think the answer is, ‘No, there isn’t.’”

Cllr Gwyneth Ellis said the council had told her a list was being developed.

The chief executive then said Cllr Jones’ question about bringing the roads up to a statutory standard was quite a complicated matter because there wasn’t a single statutory standard.

Mr Boase added: “So the answer to that question was a straight answer, no.

“We probably haven’t got a figure to bring every road in Denbighshire up to a statutory standard.”

But Mr Boase said the council did have a plan of which roads were a priority.

He added: “It (the plan) will never have enough to do all those priorities, but it is a question of where that line is, and that line will depend on how much money we’ve got.”

Corporate director Tony Ward said a figure to repair or resurface all the roads would be “astronomical”.

Cllr Feeley confirmed that she did mean a list of costed priorities for all of Denbighshire’s roads.

She added: “I know we won’t get enough money allocated to do all of it, but it would be good to know what we needed and where we needed to do it most urgently.”

The debate took place when councillors were discussing a report on the 2024/25 capital plan for council approval.

The plan encompasses investing significant resources in a wide-range of assets for the long term “to enable the delivery of public services”.

These assets include buildings, such as schools, office accommodation, and care homes; infrastructure, such as highways and ICT networks; and assets not owned by the council, such as works to improve and adapt private-sector homes.

Members agreed to note the position on the current capital plan, as well as updates on major projects, and support the recommendations of the capital scrutiny group and cabinet for capital bids to be included in the 2025/26 capital plan.

Councillors then approved the plan, capital strategy, and prudential indicators for the next financial year.

Cllr Gwyneth Ellis’ proposal was seconded by Cllr Gareth Sandilands, and the report was voted through.

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