Nottinghamshire County Council to appoint consultant to help fix "broken' roads

Nottinghamshire has some of the most potholed roads in the country and so bosses have asked a private consultant and the Local Government Association to help it work out how it could do more to mend them.

The authority has set up a new cross-party highways panel to review the state of Nottinghamshire’s roads and pavements.

Figures between 2017 and 2019 showed more than 250,000 potholes were reported to the council, higher than any other area nationally. It led to calls for a different approach to road maintenance and for new technologies to be explored.

Councillor Neil Clarke, chairman of the new highways panel, told full council: “At this stage, it is more of fact-finding and information-gathering.

“But then we will gradually move into seeing what actions can actually be taken. We have agreed we will be having an outside consultancy, WSP, who will be assisting us.

“We have asked the Local Government Association to help us with a peer review, that will be a critical friend, helping us to look in the mirror at how we perform.

“We will also be arranging to meet other county councils as well, to assess and compare how they do things.”

WSP is a global engineering and professional services company.

The new committee visited Via East Midlands’ depot in Bilsthorpe on Friday to view current methods used for road maintenance.

His update came following a question from Councillor David Martin, who asked for information on whether new technologies are being considered as part of the review.