Progress is being made on a years-long, multi-million pound road resurfacing programme taking place throughout Reading.
Reading Borough Council has a multi-year road resurfacing programme which began in 2022, with the current phase set to be completed next year.
The project involves the resurfacing of 76 major roads, 114 minor roads, and 174 footways.
It has been revealed that the programme will receive a multi-million pound boost due to the cancellation of HS2, as heard in an update on the progress of the programme provided to the council’s highways, neighbourhoods and leisure committee.
However, it has also been pointed out that the council’s highways contractor has lagged behind on the resurfacing so far.
Reading will benefit from £7.726 million to resurface roads after the High Speed Rail (HS2) between Birmingham and Manchester was cancelled by the previous Conservative government in October 2023.
A condition of the funding boost is that councils must report every three months to the Department of Transport (DfT) outlining how the money is being spent. This necessity to report was met with grumbling from Sam Shean, the council’s highways & traffic services manager.
Mr Shean said: “I’ve already made representations to the DfT to see whether that can be re-evaluated now the elections are over to see whether that can be annual.”
While the programme is ongoing work continuing into next year, some of the resurfacing project is behind, with data showing 18.5km of road was resurfaced in the last financial year of 2023/24, behind on the 30km of road the council had hoped would be resurfaced.
This data comes from a report on the council’s Corporate Plan key performance indicators (kpis) for 2023/24, with road resurfacing coloured in red for being ‘off target’.
Rob White (Green, Park) the leader of the opposition on the council, said: “I noticed that our target for resurfacing roads was 30 km done last financial year, but we only got 18.5 km done, so that was only 62 per cent of what we were hoping to get done.
“What was the reason why we hadn’t managed to hit that target?”
Answering cllr White, Mr Shean said: “When you let a contract for £7 million for minor road resurfacing, you have a peak in one year and less in a second, and hence there was a decrease.
“The overall number of roads that we intended were completed. The indicator that is more important is road condition.”
The council’s highways team stated work on the remaining 11.5 km of roads started in March, pushing completion of resurfacing into the current financial year 2024/25.
Councillors on the committee unanimously agreed to the road resurfacing projects on Wednesday, July 10.
