As pothole repair teams return

The council this week unveiled a plan to carry out a second sweep of the borough once its dedicated pothole repair teams have completed a seven month-long pothole blitz.

More than 8,000 potholes have already been repaired as the council’s crews begin work in the final three wards scheduled for improvement work - Bedford , Latchmere and Graveney.

And the borough’s transport spokesman, Councillor Russell King, said residents can expect even more improvements from the biggest road and pavement repair project to take place in Wandsworth for years. He said:
“This project has been a hugely important undertaking that has already benefitted thousands of road users and pedestrians. For the past six months we’ve had dedicated repair crews filling in potholes and fixing pavements – making their way across the entire borough.

“And there’s plenty more to come, because our hard-working crews will be doing it all again as they revisit wards across Wandsworth carrying out further repairs that may now be needed, with an emphasis on footway repairs. ”

Cllr King said the improvement project had been made possible thanks to shrewd management of the council’s finances, which has enabled this year’s road repair budget to be increased to £6.4m. He added: “Along with this improvement project, we’re continuing to monitor our streets for repairs as well as responding to reports of defects when residents make us aware of problems.”

To date, the borough’s three pothole crews have repaired 8,302 potholes in 17 wards. Last month they fixed 519 potholes in Earlsfield, 592 in Nightingale and 407 in West Hill.
Previous months have seen 1,048 repairs in Northcote, 942 in Queenstown, 932 in Roehampton and 711 in East Putney (a full breakdown is listed further below).

Each month the repair crews have been focussing their efforts on specific wards before moving on to the next scheduled area, with the ultimate aim of covering the entire borough. This doesn’t mean other urgent repairs elsewhere are being ignored. A rapid response team is dealing with those.

A further three crews, which have been tasked with fixing pavement problems, will spend November carrying out repair work in Queenstown, East Putney and Furzedown. The work is linked to the Cleaner Wandsworth campaign, which is working to make the borough's streets the cleanest in the capital.

As part of the pothole and pavement repair project, many roads are being completely resurfaced and some roads will have their pavements completely re-laid. The table below shows some of the roads that have been resurfaced so far.

Wandsworth is responsible for 1,500 roads stretching over 360km with 746km of pavements, many of which were constructed more than 100 years ago.

November 7, 2013