Garden waste collection service
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Report damage or another problem on a public road, street, pavement, footpath, cycle path or car park.
Report a pothole or other damage to roads
Use this service to report problems with:
We can only investigate problems on roads we are responsible for.
To help us decide how quickly and what action we need to take; various factors are considered, such as:
After the defect has been inspected it will be added to our works programme where it will be prioritised for repair.
Sometimes temporary repairs are made. We do this:
Over time, a road will lose its flexibility and start to become brittle. Traffic will then cause cracks to appear in the surface which, as water seeps through, leads to potholes and other defects. Very cold or wet weather speeds up this process, which is why there are often more potholes at the end of winter.
Picking the right treatment for repairing our defects is essential for using our budget wisely to keep the roads in the best condition possible with our available funding.
There are a number types of treatment and each is appropriate in different situations, the main ones we use are:
A layer of bitumen is spread on an existing surface. Chippings are then spread on the surface and rolled in. Over the next few days, traffic on the newly surface dressed road beds the chippings into the surface. Surface dressing improves the surface texture and is quick to lay, minimising road closures and disruption for the public. It can last around 10 years. When we use this technique we regularly sweep the road in the days following but it is important that drivers stick to the temporary speed limits to avoid the risk of skidding and damage to vehicles.
The top surface layer of a road is removed and replaced. This type of treatment is about five times more expensive than surface dressing and can last up to 20 years.
This is required when a length of road has deteriorated to a point where we can neither surface dress nor resurface it. Reconstruction consists of digging down to repair or replace the foundation layers of the road and finally resurfacing it. This treatment can last up to 20 years, but at around 15 times the cost of surface dressing, this is a very expensive treatment which can also cause a lot of disruption.
This involves filling in potholes or defects on a length of road, not just a single location. Patching often enables the road to then be surfaced dressed, which further extends its life.
This involves a specialist machine spraying binder and stone chippings into defects at high pressure. This technique is a very efficient way of permanently repairing a lot of pot-holes in a short space of time.
This involves filling in individual or small groups of potholes.