Disclosure Log
Contract to do Potholes, instances pot holes filled, Money paid out. (FOI/4472)
Message from Nottinghamshire County Council - 25 July 2024
Dear *****
Provision of requested information – Ref: FOI/00004472
Thank you for your request for information about potholes, which we received on 27 June 2024. Your request has been considered under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).
The information you requested is:
As a freedom of information request please could you provide, for each financial year from 2019-20 to 2023-24:
the name of contractors/companies you have contracts with to undertake pothole repair work.
Via East Midlands Ltd is responsible for highway maintenance on behalf of Nottinghamshire County Council. Via East Midlands Ltd is wholly owned by Nottinghamshire County Council.
the value of the contract between you and each above contractor/company over last three years for pothole repair work, broken down by year.
When the County Council’s Highway Inspectors visit a location to establish what repairs maybe necessary, they do not single out – what are commonly termed as – “potholes”. Instead, they take a more wholistic approach to carriageway condition and identify any defects which may require remedial action, this could also include the cracking, deformation, surface abrasion etc. As all highway defects are considered in a similar way, there is no single sum which has been identified solely for the repair of “potholes”.
The County Council employs a range of techniques to address these defects, this includes carriageway reconstruction, resurfacing, surface dressing, spray injection patching, structural patching and temporary repairs to make defects safe prior to a permanent repair.
The value of the investment which the County Council has made in these techniques - for the five years you are enquiring about - is as follows:
2019 to 20 - £19,887,000
2020 to 21 - £20,038,000
2021 to 22 - £18,810,404
2022 to 23 - £18.250,000
2023 to 24 - £23,031,769
In 2023/24 this funding allowed the County Council to deliver the following larger schemes in addition to its smaller patching works:
- 24 full resurfacing schemes,
- 39 machine lay patching schemes,
- 291 Large Patching schemes and
- 36 Micro/Surface dressing schemes
To put these larger schemes in context, they amounted to 465,532 m² of surface improvements alone.
the number of instances where each contractor has repaired a pothole, or had a subcontractor repair a pothole
Please note that we find that the term "pothole" is used by the public to cover a range of concerns, from surface crazing and ride quality to actual defects. As many of these concerns do not transpire to what we identify as potholes, we are providing data on jobs created specific to where a void has formed in the surface that requires a high priority (Cat 1) response in accordance with Nottinghamshire County Council Highway Inspection and Risk Manual (https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/media/1729316/highwayinspectionriskmanual.pdf)
2019 to 20 – 2,422
2020 to 21 – 7,228
2021 to 22 - 4,501
2022 to 23 - 10,857
2034 to 24 - 33,704
the number of instances when you required above referenced contractors to remediate poor pothole repair work carried out by their contractors in the past three years.
Officers in Via East Midlands and the County Council carry out sample inspections and instruct remedial works to be undertaken if defective works are identified. Both organisations also attend regular meetings to discuss contractor and sub-contractor performance, if issues are identified action plans are instigated to prevent these issues recuring in future. Where remedial works are instructed the County Council’s contractors and sub-contractors undertake these at their own expense. Numbers are low less than 10 instances per year.
the amount of money you has claimed back from each above contractor/company over the last three years because of pothole remediation/poor quality repair work, broken down by year.
We insist on remedial works rather than recovering money.
the number of instances where above referenced contractors/companies have had to repair their own pothole repair work (or pothole repair work undertaken by another contractor/company ) within six months of the date of carrying out the original pothole repair work, for the past three years, broken down by year.
Numbers are low less than 10 instances per year.
Your privacy: we use your personal information such as name and address so that we can comply with our legal obligations to respond to EIR requests. For further details about the use of information about you, please see the information handling privacy notice on our website at https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/media/4323566/informationgovernanceandinformationrightsprivacynotice.pdf.
If you are unhappy with the way the authority has handled your request you may ask for an internal review. Please contact: Complaints and Information – Team Manager, Nottinghamshire County Council, County Hall, Loughborough Road, West Bridgford, NOTTINGHAM, NG2 7QP or [email protected], who will arrange an internal review of your case.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, WILMSLOW, SK9 5AF or https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/.
If you have any queries about this email, please contact me.
Yours sincerely
Colin Sawers
Information Case Officer | Customers, Complaints and Information
Chief Executive"s Department | Nottinghamshire County Council
County Hall | Loughborough Road | West Bridgford | NOTTINGHAM | NG2 7QP
Tel: (0115) 977 3714