New ‘pothole inspectors’ service to be rolled out across the county

The process, which is part of the recently introduced ‘triage’ (sorting & classifying) service, will be discussed by Hertfordshire County Council’s Highways Panel on Tuesday, December 8.

The new system means that when a pothole is reported, an inspector from county hall’s contractor Ringway visits the site to inspect it, decide whether a repair is needed and what priority it should be given.

Councillor Terry Douris, cabinet member for highways, said: “We are always looking to improve the service for Hertfordshire residents and we believe this new approach will provide better value for money overall.

“The council is responsible for maintaining more than 3,000 miles of roads and this new process will better plan when intervention is required to help keep the roads in a good condition.”

Currently a repair crew is sent out to reports of potholes but often they don’t always include the exact nature of the problem, which means that sometimes a fault is given a higher priority than it might have been, or the crew don’t have the right equipment or materials to fix it.

If the new approach is agreed by members it would mean that in the case of future potholes, the inspector will assess the surrounding area.

He will then decide whether it is more efficient to repair individual potholes or if the repair should be carried out as part of wider work.

County says planning repairs in this way will ‘allow its teams to get it right first time’ on potholes, whether it be through a permanent patch or resurfacing a whole area.

Residents can report faults online at www.hertsdirect.org/highwayfaults