Risks to Blackburn with Darwen's £5m road upgrades outlined

Blackburn with Darwen Council's £5 million a year drive to tackle potholes and improve, maintain and repair its roads faces challenges including a lack of cash, climate change and meeting carbon reduction targets.

The authority's growth boss, Councillor Quesir Mahmood, has warned of the risks as he published the latest 11-page Highways Asset Management Policy.

In a report to council colleagues, he detailed his concerns about the effectiveness of the blueprint.

It said: "The council spends around £5m on highways assets annually, the majority of which is funded by a grant provided by the government, but also, in the case of general highways maintenance, from council tax.

"The Highways Asset Management Policy defines Blackburn with Darwen Council’s intended commitments and aspirations to efficiently and effectively manage our highways and highway assets, which represent the largest and most valuable set of assets in the borough and include our roads, footpaths, bridges, drains and all associated technological infrastructure.

"In recent years, the investment in highway infrastructure and its performance have been increasingly under the spotlight, and the way local highway authorities manage their highway infrastructure has been reviewed in the light of continuing financial challenges and increasing public expectations.

"The biggest challenge the highway service faces is maintaining the required levels of service across the network with insufficient funding from the Department for Transport against the significant challenges faced, including increasing traffic volume, climate change and inflation, to name but a few.

"The levels of service provided by our road network may become ever more difficult to maintain as the departments that provide these services are heavily dependent upon funding received and the maintenance works they can deliver."

The main risks highlighted by Cllr Mahmood are:

• A lack of sufficient funding and resources to continue to undertake asset management correctly, effectively and fully, resulting in the deterioration of assets, loss of value and increased risks over time;

• Not managing assets in a strategic, data-led and efficient way;

• The cumulative effects of historic underinvestment in routine and preventative maintenance on many parts of the highway and its associated assets, rendering any strategy and approach we now take being ineffective without significant funding to address issues;

• Implementing stringent carbon reduction targets;

• Loss of business, development and inward investment into Blackburn with Darwen due to a potentially poorly managed and poor-quality supporting road network;

• Climate change and severe weather events and their effects presenting new and complex challenges with uncertainty on how vulnerable our highway assets will be and how they will perform under exposure to increased and unknown weather conditions; and

• Economic and political changes or austerity, recession, inflation and market instability.

  
  

The report added: "Our policy and its commitments are to take into consideration these risks and their potential impacts with an aim to mitigate the potential negative outcomes as far as practicably possible."