Real Northumberland Murky: Scandalous ‘Riddle’ of Northumberland Highways £26m per year spent repairing roads

With £2m spent compensating drivers for pothole damage!

A recent article run through north east regional newspapers illustrates quite clearly why the secrecy surrounding everything Council within the County of Northumberland needs to be questioned by the public. The above figures are confirmed in the article by the portfolio holder for highways at County Hall, Cllr John Riddle. Also how the unlawful scrutiny of services continues well after its Leader, Glen Sanderson says whenever questioned about anything, ‘but you haven’t taken this into account’ and waves his bad tempered arms about a bit, driven by his ‘you have the temerity of questioning me’ elitist attitude.

The above figures don’t include the extra £3,872,000 received from Government in March 2023 specifically to tackle the Counties pothole problems, tackle them they must, but caught out by the local press and compared to other authorities in the region per Km and mile of highway Northumberland has, as expected, failed the test, using the amount of highway 3000Ml+ they look after as a prime excuse.

In life, everything is relative and life itself is a fine balance but in Northumberland since 2017 the Conservative policy of spending on pet projects has led to a greater number of skilled people being removed from the workforce each and every year damaging the balance in the favour of chumminess projects and not managing their service delivery correctly.

The trade costs of repairing a pothole revised for inflation in November 2023 is split into two categories:
Cat1 PLANNED MAINTENANCE of known pothole zones costs £45:83. Each.

Cat2 EMERGENCY REPAIR of potholes costs £71:40 Each.

This shows that for the £2,012,537.87 compensation to drivers figure published in the local and regional newspapers, Northumberland County Council could have delivered 43,639 planned maintenance potholes or 28,011 emergency potholes.

The figures are worse if the additional funding gifted to the Council in March 2023 is taken into consideration, they were given £3,872,000 extra by Government to help them along, leading one to think they should be repairing 84,486 planned maintenance potholes or 54,229 emergency potholes.

Our group of codgers who deliver this blog could not find any National or Local Key performance indicator information in any of the local services scrutiny minutes to indicate how few in comparison with trade estimates have been delivered and how the race to rise to the standards of Durham and the Tyne and Wear metropolitan councils on a mileage or km basis compares. It doesn’t bode well for the Council who have bumbled from high profile mess to mess of ever achieving best value on behalf of its residents, something they have failed at over the last six years. The lack of KPIs and LPI’s by councillors at scrutiny is unlawful as a Council can’t be scrutinised correctly without that information being made available at each and every meeting to manage improvements against plan and may have been why Councillor Peter Jackson is banging on about bringing the Police back in to investigate Councillor Sandersons administration.

One glance at fixmystreet.com using your home postcode will see how many potholes have been reported near your home. But the root cause of potholes is also something that the loss of experienced staff over the last six years has exacerbated severely and now may be beyond the control of Council.

Flooding and soil erosion coupled with the management of hedges and ditches is one of the main causes of potholes on the highway. Yet Brexit has failed society in this respect. As early as 2021, the Big Issue was banging on about the lack of cash being spent in this area as common agricultural policy grants disappeared. Northumberland County Council who should be maintaining 2203Ml of highways ditches and farmers and landowners who own an estimated 1700Ml of ditches that are required to be kept clean to lower the water table and keep roads pothole free are not doing so. In the case of the County Council its due to lack of inspections and the now low number of inspectors who used to liaise with farmers on this matter whom the Council employs.

Councillor Sanderson the Council's leader has published and declared a climate emergency. It's an underfunded ‘look at me I’m a Tory’ document backing up 11 projects at £5000 each for volunteers to steer climate publicity in his favour. It's a bottom spot of an idea from a man who should know better as for years his prime income was generated as a regional peer of the Tory held Local Government Association covering Yorkshire and the North of England, going around teaching Councils how to deliver Best Value in a world where his Government was driving austerity as opposed to service delivery. A do as I say not as I do world of the deluded by power, waiting for a knighthood Tory.

Looks like more failure is on the way unless a serious change at the top of this Council happens rapidly and a new medium term plan of deliverable action is published.