In December 2024 Devon County Council received additional funding of £83,640,000 for pothole repairs and resurfacing etc.
1) Can you tell me how much of this has been spent so far this year and how does this figure compare with the amount spent last year.
2024/25 Capital Budget Allocation = £73,116,000
Month 3 (end of June) Spend = £11,123,000
% = 15%
2025/26 Capital Budget Allocation = £83,621,000
Month 3 (end of June) Spend = £8,621,000
% = 10%
2) Also is any extra money being spent on inspection of repairs carried out by your contractors – some of the so-called repairs are a rip-off by the contractor and the tax payers are footing the bill for poor work.
The £83,621,000 is capital funding and is not available for inspection of repairs. Inspection of repairs is funded from revenue budgets and no additional funding has been allocated.
With regards to repair quality, we have an established system of audit in place which sees us check a proportion of all completed safety defect repairs each year. Where repairs have been undertaken that are not to mutually agreed benchmarks and specifications we will raise remedial works instructions, which require our contractor to return to site and re-do the repair at no extra cost to the authority. These audits are randomised but where we notice any trends, for example in particular areas, we will flag these with contractor operational personnel. To add some context, in 2024/25 we undertook in the region of 1,400 defect repair audits.
We also have established Performance Improvement Teams (PITs), seeing Devon County Council and our contractor come together frequently, as a platform for formally raising and escalating any concerns. On top of this, we will also follow up on reports in relation to poor quality of repairs from other officers, councillors and also members of the public. We also work very closely with our contractor and in-house materials laboratory to ensure the material we use to repair potholes is approved and tested to provide the greatest possible longevity, given the challenging conditions on our rural network. This is under constant review.