New-fangled pothole repairs proving a hit

Twice as many potholes have been filled in than last year thanks to a new road-mending methods - councillors have claimed.

More than £2.8m is spent annually on repairing roads across Nottinghamshire, but thanks to its new approach, the council claims to have improved its efficiency.

The conventional method was to cut around the pothole, fill it with hot asphalt, roll and seal it.

But county council workers are now using a newly-developed mixture of cold asphalt which can be tipped into the pothole, compacted with a hand rammer and which then dries to a very hard surface in just two minutes.

Repairs can be made by one person in less than five minutes and can also be carried out in the rain because the material soaks up any water within the pothole.

The council is also using another new repair method called ‘Nu-phalt’ which it is using to fix larger areas where there may be a concentration of potholes and where it would not be efficient to repair them all on an individual basis or where the new cold asphalt is not appropriate because of their size.

For using the new method, the Government also pledged an additional £2.78m to the cause.

“These methods are dramatically reducing the time taken and create a much more responsive service,” said Coun Kevin Greaves, chairman of the transport and highways committee.

“We are on target to fill as many as 86,000 potholes because over the next six months we have very many small resurfacing schemes and bigger areas of patching that are programmed in, forming a very high number of ‘pothole’ equivalents.

“There are still locations where it is more appropriate to use conventional repair methods but, overall, the two new methods mean many more potholes are being repaired in a cost-effective way.”