Minutes:
(1) The Committee agreed that the two presentations set out at items 5 and 6 on the agenda would be considered together. The presentation slides are contained within the electronic agenda papers on the KCC website.
(2) Mr Michael Payne (Deputy Cabinet Member for Planning, Highways, Transport and Waste) began his presentation by setting out some of the outcomes that KCC’s programme of planned maintenance aimed to achieve. These were: fewer flooding incidents on Kent’s highways; ensuring that the roads and footways were free from standing water; and building greater resilience against intense rainfall events. The difficulty of achieving this outcome could be gauged by noting that the rainwater goods at St Paul’s Cathedral had overtopped ten times during the year, whereas this had only happened once in the previous ten. This, in turn, would assist in reducing disruption and increase customer satisfaction and confidence.
(3) Mr Payne moved on to consider KCC’s assets. The most significant of these were the 250k roadside drains. Road Maintenance generally was undertaken to maintain road safety and to maximise the lifespan of the highway.
(4) Mr Payne said that the Drainage Team received over 7,000 enquiries a year, primarily in respect of blocked drains which presented a general risk. An analysis of drainage enquiries received over the previous four years (2014 – 18) showed that the peak periods had not always been during the winter months or, indeed, during the same months each year. For example, the annual peak during the previous three had occurred in June 2016, July and August 2017 and in May 2018.
(5) The budget allocation for drainage maintenance was £2.5m, enabling a response to flooding that posed an immediate risk to highway safety. Drainage hotpots were cleaned every six months and roadside drains on main roads every 12. Other assets were targeted within 2 hours or 90 days, depending on their severity. Other budget allocations were for ironwork repairs, pumping station servicing and repairs and drainage investigations, together with a £3.5 budget for capital work.
(6) Mr Payne then said that not all drains were cleaned every year, nor was it always necessary to do so. Another 4,000 jobs were issued to the contractors in response to customer enquiries to clean gullies, jet lines, cleanse soakaways and to generally carry out investigations to reduce surface water on the network.
(7) Mr Payne continued by setting out the significant factors that affected drainage maintenance. These included the age of infrastructure, the limited capacity of the drains to deal with flash flooding events, third party infrastructure such as ditches next to highways not being kept in good order by landowners, and reductions in street sweeping by some local authorities.
(8) Mr Payne aske the Committee to note that three were annual planned proactive inspections of all 5,400 miles of Kent’s highway network as well as reactive inspections in response to customer enquiries.
(9) Mr Payne turned to the programme of capital drainage repairs and improvements. He explained that there were limitations on highway drainage in terms of coping with intense rainfall events. Funding priorities took into account the nature of the road, safety to highway users and flooding to private properties. Scheme priorities were set in order of risk. There were 200 major schemes on the programme for the current financial year. The capital schemes were designed in line with a 1 in 100-year storm event.
(10) Mr Payne concluded with a quotation from a charter issued by King Wihtred of Kent in @ 700 in which he had described the Kentish climate as “evil in winter, grievous in summer and never good.”
(11) Mr Earl Bourner (Asset Manager, Drainage, Structures and Safety Barriers) gave a presentation on the prioritisation of investment. The criteria were road safety, disruption to the highway network and internal property flooding in the light of how much work was needed (repair or renewal), whether the existing asset worked (like for like or change) and whether it could be future-proofed.
(12) Once the roads, drainage and structures had been identified, they needed to be assessed as high risk or low risk, which would determine what would be delivered during the current year and what could be deferred, taking into account the authority’s legal obligations (Highways Act, Traffic Management Act and Climate Change Act) and KCC’s objectives (vision and strategic outcomes). The question of whether to reduce, sustain or enhance the service depended on the level of funding received.
(13) Mr Bourner said that KCC Highways was moving to an Asset Management approach in order to manage the drainage asset using a risk-based model. This was a necessary condition to gain increased funding. The Highway Assets section was led by Andrew Loosemoore and had overview of 7 sub-sections (including roads, drainage and bridges, tunnels & highway structures).
(14) Mr Bourner went on to explain the basic principles for the Asset Management approach for highway assets. This involved identifying the asset; assessing the asset’s condition; the prioritisation of investment and other significant factors, as well as the level of service, including funding for the next financial year.
(15) Mr Bourner then said that another aspect of asset management was known as “map16.” As the name implied, this involved digitally mapping the County’s drainage assets to improve the maintenance process. It involved mobile data collection where every gully was inspected and/or cleansed with the information being recorded on map16 tablets. This information included silt levels, defects such as broken or blocked gullies. The longer this information was processed, the easier it would become to identify those gullies that needed repair whilst avoiding returning to the same gullies every year. Live dashboards could monitor the number of gullies cleansed and those that had not been visited whilst also identifying their location and any additional significant information in respect of any problems associated with each of them. Map6 also allowed data interrogation to identify hotspots within the drainage network, carry out silt level analysis and identify risk areas.
(16) Mr Pugh asked whether KCC had a comprehensive mapping system of where the low-lying potential flood areas were so that the public could be warned that their drains and gullies were at risk of blockage, or that alluvial water was coming off the land. Mr Bourner replied that this would be a mixture of responsibilities for the Highway Authority, the Flood and Water Management Team and the Environment Agency. The Highways Authority knew the hotspots which were in need of six-monthly cleansing and which areas were likely to flood. Tankers would be in place to clear the flood water away and, if necessary, close the road. Mr Payne added that lists of hotspots had been made available at the various parish seminars. The mapping tool showing which drains were the most at risk was also available to each Parish.
(17) Mr Pugh then said that a wide variety of information needed to be made available to residents, who should also be encouraged to report any significant flooding conditions that arose. Mr Bourner confirmed that Kent Highways had a successful on-line reporting tool which the public was encouraged to use for this purpose.
(18) Mr Balfour said that there were two adjacent gullies on the south side of the A20 in his Tonbridge and Malling constituency which flooded whenever it rained. This state of affairs was still in existence after several years. This had been reported to KCC’s contractor who had expressed surprise as it did not appear on their list. This demonstrated that on occasions there were gaps between KCC receiving a report from the public, informing the contractor, and the problem being rectified. The amount of money that KCC allocated for this work was very low (although the KCC Highways officers performed extremely well). There was, however in his view, a problem at the contractor’s end of the process.
(19) Mr Bourner said that KCC Highways had its scheduled programme of maintenance on all the major roads in the County. They also aimed to return every call received from the public, although this was not always possible. Over 7,000 enquiries relating to flooding had been received up to this point in 2018. KCC Highways was still dealing with the backlog of work which had built up during the May storms when over 1,100 enquiries had been received. It was easy to simply clear a gully but any blockage in the system needed further investigation, possibly including a CCTV survey, which meant that it would take a greater length of time to fix it. This could include digging down to repair the pipe or installing a new soakaway. Such work could take up to 90 days to complete. Great efforts were made to keep the customer up-to-date at all times.
(20) Mr Laws said that one of his constituents in Lydd had received a very negative response by the Highways officer when he had reported that water lapped into his garden every time there was a deluge. Mr Laws had attended the recent Parish Seminar and had spoken to Simon Jones, the new Director of Highways, Transportation and Waste on his constituent’s behalf. He was pleased to say that within a few days the contractors had arrived and begun work. He added that the found all the Area Highways Officers very helpful and approachable. He then said that whilst younger people were usually very capable of using the on-line reporting tool, some of the more senior citizens might find it less straight forward.
(21) Mrs Brown said that the maps were very comprehensive in terms of flooding. She had, however, needed to make a complaint in October about items disappearing from the portal., marked as completed when this was not the case. She had been advised that this occurred every time the work was passed to the contractor. This was particularly the case with blocked gullies. She asked for these items to be left on together with a status report. Mr Bourner replied that when the work was passed to the contractor, it was moved onto the contractor’s queue which was also on-line. The enquiry would not simply disappear.
(22) Mr Mortimer said that he understood that the pumps on the underpasses on the gyratory system in Maidstone had not been working during the previous week resulting in some 2 ft of water. Mr Bourner replied that they had all been blocked and been cleaned out two weeks before the meeting. There was only a small gully which fed into a system that went into the river. This gully was prone to being blocked very easily but could not be deepened because of the way in which the structure had been built. It was therefore cleaned on a regular basis.
(23) The Chairman said that the evidence from the presentation and the questions asked indicated a problem of under-funding. This problem would grow due to the issues created by the changing climate.
(24) Mrs Hurst said that it appeared that contractors were coming out to an area, cleaning one or two drains and then departing to carry out work in another area, leaving behind other blockages that had been reported. She felt that this was a waste of resources and that it would be far more practical to carry out all the work in the area at the same time. Mr Payne replied that this could be a question of how the contractor approached the work allocated. Mr Bourner added that for scheduled cleansing, the contractor would carry out the necessary work on every single item in the road or area in question unless there were broken lids or parked cars in the way. The other gullies were cleansed reactively. On these occasions, the Highways Inspectors were encouraged to inspect the whole road and identify any other drains or gullies that could be attended to at the same time. The overall problem was the low level of funding which meant that they could only target those roads that were reported.
(25) Mrs Hurst said that she had reported a blocked drain in Birchington in 2016. By the time it had been rectified some two weeks before the meeting, there was grass growing out of the drain. On one occasion, the contractors had attended to another blocked drain in the same road. They had been asked to look at the drain in question while they were in the vicinity. They had done so and then driven away.
(25) The Committee agreed to invite Mr Payne and Mr Bourner to give a further presentation to the meeting in November 2019 to provide an update on work undertaken, particularly during the winter months.
(26) RESOLVED that Mr Payne and Mr Bourner be thanked for their presentation and that they be invited to update the Committee at its meeting in November 2019.