August Highways Highlights
The latest August Highways Highlights is available now to download, here are some teasers so you can see if you want to read it in full:
Our Favourite Subject – Potholes
As if West Bergholt didn’t know – all Essex Highways’ Road Surfacing crews are working flat out. There is also a list of how many have been fixed in each district with advice to not treat it like some type of league table because each district has different types of roads. 🙂
Rogue Highwaymen
Apparently, there are some folks pretending to be working for Essex Highways and offering to do private work. They have had at least some success with this con with at least one elderly resident giving them £2,000. Essex Highways DO NOT do private work – don’t be conned.
Eyes on the Road
This article is basically an appeal for help in securing £100,000s of written-off damage to highway furniture. Road signs, bollards, bus stops and much more are often damaged by road users. They ask:
Have you ever seen a vehicle hit or damage one of our road signs, bollards, bus stops or guardrails? Do you have details of the vehicle responsible? If so, we’d like to hear from you – and it’s better for us to be told something more than once, than never being informed!
There’s also a snippet about the difference between RED & GREEN claims.
Local Highways Panels
There are 12 of these around the county, one addressing Colchester’s needs. Members meet on a quarterly basis to discuss and mutually consider Highways expenditure within the Borough boundaries. Given the recent drive to 3rd-party suppliers the article includes the perhaps slightly controversial section:
One criticism of LHPs is that it seems to take some time from initial proposal to building the improvement. Some delays come from the contracting process, so earlier this year we introduced a ‘direct delivery crew’. These colleagues, directly employed by Essex Highways, can start work immediately a scheme is designed and finance agreed. Very often the costs involved in construction are less, saving money and bringing safety sooner to our local roads.
These ‘direct labour’ projects have already delivered 29 improvement schemes this year.
A Word from Cabinet Member for Infrastructure
Councillor Kevin Bentley recently joined 2 repair crews in Halstead to see at first hand the work they undertake – he was impressed.
If you are a member of the Twitterati you can follow a number of Twitter feeds according to your needs and/or interests including:
- @essexhighways – for warnings of major road closures for our works, progress reports and general useful highways info
- @Essex_Travel – followed by almost 50,000 people, the Essex Travel Control Centre tweets live incidents, congestion and roads cleared Monday to Friday 6am-8pm
- @Essex_pt – the Council Passenger Transport Information team publish bus-related changes and news
- @SaferEssexRoads – Safer Essex Roads Partnership for road safety campaigns and information
- @HighwaysEAST – regional Highways England feed with live incidents and congestion on their roads through Essex and beyond– A12; M11; M25; A120.
Read it all:
To read the document in full and to keep in touch with other news and updates from Essex Highways visit their online Information Centre.