Agenda item

To receive an update from the Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport and the Director Highway, Transportation and Waste on the County Council’s drainage programme.

(1)       The Cabinet Committee received a report of the Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport and the Director, Highways, Transportation and Waste which update Members on the approach to maintaining and improving the highway drainage system.  Behdad Haratbar, Head of Programmed Work, and Katie Lewis, Drainage & Flooding Manager, were in attendance to introduce the report.

(2)       Several Members requested that their gratitude to Miss Lewis for all the hard work she had done on highway drainage was recorded.

(3)       In response to questions raised and comments made the Committee received the following further information from officers:

(4)       Miss Lewis thanked Members for their thanks and stated that she would share them with her team.

(5)       The County Council was responsible for the maintenance of the 5,400 miles of public highway roads including 250,000 roadside drains (gullies) and associated drainage systems, the primary objectives of these systems were:

a.      Removal of surface water (from the carriageway) to maintain road safety and minimise nuisance,

b.      Effective sub-surface drainage to prevent damage to the structural integrity of the highway and maximise its lifespan; and,

c.       Minimise the impact of highway surface water on the adjacent environment including properties.

(6)       Over recent years, the number of prolonged and heavy rainfall events had increased, notably during the winter of 2013/14.  As prolonged and heavy rainfall events had become more frequent, the number of customer enquiries had increased year on year.  The volume of customer enquiries now stood at twice that of 2009. 

(7)       In the past 12 months, around 10,000 enquiries related to drainage and flooding had been received.  Of these, 3,000 were related directly to highway flooding and 500 related to incidents of highway flooding that had resulted in damage to private properties.

(8)       The Highway Drainage service was split into two functions; maintenance; and repairs, renewals and improvements.

(9)       This year, the County Council had increased capital investment in drainage infrastructure to £4.3m.  This was enabling completion of an additional 120 drainage improvement schemes during 2014/15.  Investment had been prioritised on the basis of the following risks; highway safety, internal flooding of properties and network disruption.

(10)    In December 2010, a change of approach to cleaning highway drains had been approved. There had been a transition from providing a purely reactive service to delivering routine maintenance on a cyclical basis.

(11)    The departure from a predominantly reactive service combined with very wet weather throughout 2012 had resulted in an initial decline in customer satisfaction.  However this improved significantly and by April 2013 customer satisfaction had reached 87%.

(12)    The frequency of cyclical cleansing on high speed roads was reduced from six monthly to annually to be consistent with the frequency of maintenance on the county’s other main roads as part of a service wide saving that came into effect on 1 April 2014.  This applied to all routine maintenance on the high speed road network.

(13)    Miss Lewis stated that ways of advising people of the cycle of cleansing had been considered but as it only took one serious weather event to put the whole rota out of sync this was difficult.  She suggested that sharing details of the cycle with boroughs and parishes a month or so in advance was probably the best solution and that this could be done through the highway stewards.

(14)    A reactive service was still available and to access this people should be referred to the Contact Centre.

(15)    Highways recognised the impact flooding and repeat flooding had on businesses and were working with partners to address these issues.

(16)    Under the new scheme when a call was received about a blocked drain on a rural or minor road a highway steward would be sent to assess the situation.  A member of the public might report a blocked drain but during an inspection the highways steward might note that several drains were blocked and there were some potholes that could be filled at the same time as the drains were being cleared.  Highway stewards had detailed knowledge of their areas but this could always be enhanced by information from local Members and members of the public to ensure that they were responding to the bigger picture.  With the benefit of their local knowledge a highway steward would know that a drain which was blocked was actually on the main access route into the village or to the local school, shops etc and so would be able to flag this as an issue that needed rectifying as a priority despite the fact that it did not necessarily meet the criteria.

(17)    Cars parked over drains and impeding the drainage clearance was an issue.  Following the first cycle of cyclical cleansing the areas where this was a particular issue had been identified and letter drops to inform residents of what was going to happen were now being done in advance of the cleansing.

(18)    Regarding run-off from ditches and fields and the impact of this work was ongoing with landowners to improve this.  Following recent parish seminars work was being done with parishes to produce a guide of who was responsible for what to empower them to be able to approach landowners as KCC would.

(19)    RESOLVED that the regime outlined within the report be endorsed.