Huddersfield Town Centre’s highways and footpaths are on the road to recovery
We are increasing the number of teams working on fixing pot holes and other defects in the town centre’s roads and walking routes.
Where is the money coming from?
This builds on the £2.5million Cabinet invested in October last year to deliver the Huddersfield Town Centre Design Framework. This project ensures that all future public realm and road repair works in the town centre meet the same high standard and also looks at introducing more green and social spaces.
This is also in addition to the £6.6million already spent each year on improving Kirklees’ 1,911km of roads.
However, the latest inspection revealed there were 280 road and footway repairs required in the town centre, meaning the council is mainly focussed on fixing this backlog.
How will this happen?
In light of this, we have brought in two subcontracted teams to help tackle it. They will join our in-house teams currently working on maintaining the quality of the roads and footways.
This would allow three teams to be working on reactive repairs, while the fourth team focusses on bigger scale proactive works such as projects identified through the Huddersfield Town Centre Design Framework.
When will the new teams start?
The additional teams, set to begin in March 2019, will be subcontracted for a minimum of three months to tackle the heavy workload.
Cllr Peter McBride, Cabinet Member for Economy, said:
“This year our ambitious budget proposals were approved. We promised that the spending would reflect our vision to improve the quality of life for communities across Kirklees, strengthen our local economy and improve the local infrastructure.
That’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re investing in our roads and footpaths at a time it’s really needed.
With the extreme weather we saw this time last year and the heavy flow of traffic through Huddersfield Town Centre every day, our roads and walking routes are up against it.
We know how highly residents value good quality roads and walkways and as a council it is a real priority for us to get these basic services absolutely right.”
How to report a pothole
If you want to report a pothole go to our website.
Is it beyond reasonable hope that other town centres, which never get a mention, such as Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike, could have their potholes, roadways and footpaths repaired and improved to the same standard as proposed for Huddersfield. As far as I am aware we pay the same rates of council tax and should be entitled to a similar level of service/facility.
The Hungerford Road, Egerton road surface is a disgrace, it’s only redeming feature bring that of traffic calming!