The purpose of this Freedom of Information (FOI) request is to understand the processes that Devon County Council (DCC) uses in dealing with potholes, from their own inspections and from reports from the public, and the means by which repairs are done. Please provide this information for the purposes of understanding how long it takes (or is supposed to take) to repair a pothole, which can vary according to the classification of the damaged road.
Please supply the current policy for inspecting highways for potholes by road classification, identifying frequency of inspection and method of undertaking an inspection, the process for responding to potholes identified by inspection or reports by members of the public including timescales, and the policy for referring a pothole repair to a contractor and the timescales for effecting the repairs.
Devon County Council have a legal duty to keep the highway network safe. Details around how we achieve this can be found in our Highway Safety Policy. The policy includes our approach to formal safety inspections, including their frequency dependant on the maintenance category of the highway, and also the response times where defect investigatory criteria are met.
In addition to our formal safety inspection regime, and in line with recommendations set out in the national code of practice ‘Well Managed Highway Infrastructure’, DCC also provide a facility for members of the public to report defects to us. This can either be done using the reporting pages on our website, or by contacting our Customer Service Centre. Where potholes are reported, these are all individually assessed by trained Highway Safety Inspectors; again, in conjunction with our Highway Safety Policy. Inspectors will determine if reported pothole defects meet investigatory criteria. Where this may not be the case, reports will be closed down with a suitable response informing as to why.
Once defect instructions have been created by our inspection teams, the information is passed to our term maintenance contractors’ works management system where they will be passed out to repair gangs by a scheduling agent who will endeavour to do so as efficiently as possible, whilst keeping in mind the response times detailed in Table 1.0 of the Highway Safety Policy. For ease, actionable defects range from defects requiring response within 2 hours, right through to those defects that represent a much reduced risk and are to be dealt with within the next 90 days.