HIGHWAYS REPAIR PROGRAMME 2021/22 DETAILS PUBLISHED

Cheshire East Council has published details of its highways repair programme for the financial year 2021/22 (for full details, please see https://www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/highways_and_roads/road-maintenance/road-repair-and-improvement-programme-2021-2022/road-repair-and-improvement-programme-2021-2022.aspx).

Unfortunately, this year sees a 21% reduction (£3.9m) in the level of funding the council receives from the Department for Transport to repair and maintain the road network on its behalf. Whilst the reduction in government funding is disappointing, Cheshire East Council has attempted to make good the shortfall this year by investing £3m from its own capital budget - essentially your Council Tax.

Whilst the added investment from your Council Tax has helped, the table above clearly shows a fall in investment in the highways network this year and this inevitably means that Cheshire East Highways will be able to repair and maintain fewer roads this year than last year. Nevertheless, I have been working hard to ensure that some of our local roads do make it onto this year's list.

Macclesfield Road & Knutsford Road (from the Brook Lane Roundabout to the Ward Boundary) have both scored highly being ranked 23rd and 25th on the list respectively. There is a realistic expectation that repairs will be carried out on both routes and this should be confirmed in about 6 weeks time. London Road (between Heyes Lane and Macclesfield Road) is the next highest, ranked in 55th place.

Roads are assessed across the borough in line with the Dept for Transport's required criteria; however, to assist residents in their understanding, I am publishing the assessment criteria below along with this year's list of assessed roads (ranked in terms of score). In summary however, the criteria are: engineer/local councillor priority; road condition; number of defects per scheme; number of customer service requests (complaints) per scheme; claims per scheme; and scheme location.