Carmarthenshire cash boost after big freeze
Carmarthenshire is to receive a share of a £15 million cash boost to help cover the cost of the recent big freeze.
The Welsh Assembly Government has announced additional funding of £8million to assist local authorities to deal with urgent road repairs and replenish their salt stocks.
It comes on top of £7 million announced last week to fix potholes, bringing the total amount of extra funding to £15 million.
Carmarthenshire will receive a total of £1.126 million to spend on pothole repairs, frost damage and purchasing salt.
Potholes are caused by severe weather, particularly prolonged cold weather; water lies in cracks in the road and during periods of sub-zero temperatures it turns into ice and expands, causing the surface of the road to break up resulting in deeper-than-usual potholes.
The council’s executive board member for technical services Councillor Philip Hughes said: “We welcome this extra money from the Welsh Assembly Government which will be used to target the worst-affected roads in Carmarthenshire.
“Like all local authorities in Wales we already have a substantial highways maintenance backlog and this winter’s extreme weather conditions will undoubtedly put added pressure on already stretched resources.”
The council has spent more than £2 million on patching and other reactive repairs in 2010.
It anticipated the council will have spent more than £2 million on repairing defective sections of road by the end of March 2010 as a result of the severe weather.
The council’s director of technical services Richard Workman said “We have a duty to keep the roads safe and therefore our initial response when potholes are identified is to fill them in as a semi-permanent treatment to reduce risk to the travelling public and then follow this up with a permanent long-term solution if need be.
“It is more cost effective to do deal with the problems in this way as we can then prioritise works by formulating a rolling programme of larger scale repairs that range from extensive patching to major resurfacing works. This additional grant money will be used to undertake such works.”
The Welsh Assembly Government has announced additional funding of £8million to assist local authorities to deal with urgent road repairs and replenish their salt stocks.
It comes on top of £7 million announced last week to fix potholes, bringing the total amount of extra funding to £15 million.
Carmarthenshire will receive a total of £1.126 million to spend on pothole repairs, frost damage and purchasing salt.
Potholes are caused by severe weather, particularly prolonged cold weather; water lies in cracks in the road and during periods of sub-zero temperatures it turns into ice and expands, causing the surface of the road to break up resulting in deeper-than-usual potholes.
The council’s executive board member for technical services Councillor Philip Hughes said: “We welcome this extra money from the Welsh Assembly Government which will be used to target the worst-affected roads in Carmarthenshire.
“Like all local authorities in Wales we already have a substantial highways maintenance backlog and this winter’s extreme weather conditions will undoubtedly put added pressure on already stretched resources.”
The council has spent more than £2 million on patching and other reactive repairs in 2010.
It anticipated the council will have spent more than £2 million on repairing defective sections of road by the end of March 2010 as a result of the severe weather.
The council’s director of technical services Richard Workman said “We have a duty to keep the roads safe and therefore our initial response when potholes are identified is to fill them in as a semi-permanent treatment to reduce risk to the travelling public and then follow this up with a permanent long-term solution if need be.
“It is more cost effective to do deal with the problems in this way as we can then prioritise works by formulating a rolling programme of larger scale repairs that range from extensive patching to major resurfacing works. This additional grant money will be used to undertake such works.”
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