THE highways team at DEVON County Council (DCC) will carry out a ‘repair blitz’ on potholes in a few trial areas of the county, it can be confirmed.

While approving an £83 million programme of capital funded highway maintenance schemes, the County Council’s Cabinet heard from Councillor Dan Thomas, Cabinet Member for Highways, who stated that the condition of Devon’s roads is not up to scratch because the county is ‘grossly under resourced by central government’.

Councillors backed proposals to trial areas where all potholes would be filled, rather than just dealing with safety defects.

Although the exact details are still to be agreed, this pilot would be used to establish the budget implications of changing maintenance procedures.

Councillors also agreed that a task group from the Audit Committee should be formed to review the previous Cabinet’s decision from last November on the future delivery model for highway maintenance.

The Cabinet at the time resolved that a procurement process should get underway for a Term Maintenance Contract to deliver core highway work such as safety defect repairs, gully emptying and winter service, supported with smaller "Framework Contracts" for additional patching, surfacing, drainage and other improvements.

It was also agreed to examine the costs of accelerating the remarking of white lines across the county.

Councillor Dan Thomas, Devon County Council Cabinet Member for Highways, said: ‘We are being very honest that the state of the roads is not as we would want; that’s our starting point.

‘The one message that I would like the public to hear today is that every single member of the Highways Department, from the director to the neighbourhood highways officers that we deal with on a daily basis, are all acutely aware that we are not able to do the things the public wants us to do as quickly as we would like.

‘It is simply because we are grossly under resourced by central government and I think we have to make that very clear from the start of this Council.

‘We have a repair backlog of around £390 million, and to keep us in a steady state it costs around £102 million a year.

‘We don’t have that, so whatever we do under the current funding formula, we’re not going to solve the problem - we have to be clear about that.

‘We are not alone in this, but that’s little consolation to residents in Devon.

‘We are asking for a trial in a few areas to fill all potholes, not just safety defects, when visiting a site.

‘By asking to trial this change it is a very different notion from where we were before and we want to establish what the cost implications are and how effective that would be on the lower category roads’.

Around £56 million of this year’s highway maintenance capital budget will be invested in road maintenance and surface treatments, with the remainder being allocated to bridges and structures, streetlighting, traffic signals, public rights of way and other highways assets.

To ensure principal roads across the county are retained in a condition where less than 4% require immediate attention, £8.7 million has been allocated for preventative treatments and resurfacing.