Highways investment welcomed in Gwent

COUNCILLORS have welcomed the chance of being able to help decide which roads in individual Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council wards need fixing.

On Monday, July 19, councillors on the Community Services scrutiny committee looked at the options for extra work on top of routine highways routine maintenance in the 2021/22 financial year.

This would include filling in potholes and patching up parts of the roads in the county borough.

Street scene team manager, David Watkins said: “Over the next two to three weeks it is the intention for officers to meet with all 16 ward members to have a look and identify works and have discussions on how they feel they want to take that for their particular ward.

“We feel as officers there should be a full consultation on where these works will be undertaken and what type of work it will be.”

He said that following the talks with councillors, the authority would need to tender for a contractor to do the work, which he hoped would be done in the autumn.

Mr Watkins added: “There’s no money identified at this point in time that will need a further report to go to the Executive and go to Council for final approval to be able to use some of the council’s reserves to undertake the works.”

Cllr Peter Baldwin, said: “Thanks for doing this in the correct way and involving us as members on our patches, we are the ones that take the flak off the residents, many times a week on some occasion.”

Cllr Wayne Hodgins, said: “This is the end result of a long process of us as members listening to the public on the way we have been repairing, it shows we are investing in our highways infrastructure.”

Cllr Hodgins added that he saw the proposal as “spend to save” and it would “pay” in the long run.

The preferred option which was backed by the committee would aim for around 400 square metres of highways repairs per ward covering residential roads in all 16 wards.