More than £60 million needs to be spent to bring the roads network in Perth and Kinross up to standard, it has been revealed.
“Every council is facing a large backlog of roads maintenance work that will be extremely challenging to address, as a result of years of budget constraints,” he said.
“The figures for Perth and Kinross compare favourably with many other areas. This council spends all of the money it receives for roads on actually maintaining our road network. That money is not directed elsewhere.”
Mr Kellas admitted that the financial situation faced by councils “was not going to get any better” in the short to medium term. He said local authorities are going to face ever-greater challenges in the coming years and required some innovative thinking if they are to cope.
“There are no easy answers to the problems we face with regard to roads maintenance, but we have examined all the options open to us,” Mr Kellas went on. “Keeping a key roads network in good condition is the most sensible solution to the situation we face and that is the option that the committee is being asked to approve.”
He added, “If this is approved, a more targeted and prioritised approach will be taken, rather than spreading the roads maintenance budget equally around different parts of the area.”
The council has said it will continue to work with Tayside Contracts to come up with new, cost-effective methods of carrying out road repairs.
“Tayside Contracts is well known for its innovation in this area and we will work with them to explore any new technology and methodology that can help us tackle this problem,” the convener added.
In addition to the usual wear and tear on the region’s roads network, Perth and Kinross is like other local authorities across Scotland continuing to feel the effects of the heavy snowfall and storms at the turn of the year.
By mid-March of this year, road repair crews across Tayside and Fife had filled almost 20,000 potholes, with significant further work still outstanding.
The council has admitted that it is facing “a major challenge” to tackle a growing backlog of road repairs.
Decades of budget constraints have been blamed for hampering the efforts of councils across Scotland to adequately address the problem.
At a meeting of the local authority’s enterprise and infrastructure committee on Wednesday, councillors will hear that the total repairs backlog for the Perth and Kinross area now amounts to almost £62.8 million.
With this in mind, they will be asked to approve a new road repairs strategy that will allocate budget for repairs according to need across the region. Roads that are well-used and are in most urgent need of repair will be prioritised in order to keep the key local network in good condition.
Earlier this year, Mid Scotland and Fife Tory MSP Liz Smith claimed that the region had “some of the worst maintained roads in Europe” and called on the council to consider “radical solutions”.
A report to the committee does reveal, however, that Perth and Kinross is performing better than the Scottish average in keeping on top of repairs on its 2427km of carriageways.
Over the last year, the total cost of the national backlog rose by 12.33% to almost £2 billion, but in Perth and Kinross it rose by just 4.9%.
Enterprise and infrastructure convener Councillor John Kellas said maintaining the condition of the road network was “a national issue”.
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