All dressed up, but no cash for Aberdeenshire Council to resurface the north-east's roads
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Just one out of 29 resurfacing priority projects in the Buchan area is set to be taken forward, while in the Garioch just four out of 49 have been allocated funding, new reports show.
Members of the Banff and Buchan area committee and the Garioch area committee will meet on Tuesday and are being presented with updated road works plans.
In it roads officers comment: "The substantially decreased levels of funding for planned road resurfacing and surface dressing will see the percentage of the network receiving a new or enhanced road surface decrease.
"One consequence of this is that the amount of road patching that will be carried out in this and future years will increase.
"In short, there will be a shift in focus in road maintenance from planned work to reactive work.
"The Service is reviewing the way it records, handles and actions defect response operations to ensure that, as far as possible, it is able to achieve repair targets both in terms of volume and timescale."
The documents reveal that despite the continued deterioration of north-east roads, the priority has shifted to surface dressing as opposed to resurfacing work.
For the Garioch area, four sites at Westhill Drive, Westhill; Alexander Stree, Insch; Mortimers Lane, Inverurie and Golf Terrace, Insch have been allocated a budget of £249,500 in total out of 29 listed as in need of priority work.
In comparison the surface dressing scheme sees 26 sites allocated funding to the value of £1.2 million, with over 150 others listed as in need of work highlighting the sheer scale of works needed on the north-east's roads.
In Buchan only one resurfacing site at Mintlaw has been allocated funds of £117,000 out of 29 on the prority list, with 20 surface dressing locations to the value of £1.1million with a further six noted.
The cyclical nature of the planning for works has seen considerable effort in the past 12 months focused on surfacing dressing in the Buchan area, reducing the future planned works required.
In the report officers comment: "Road Maintenance schemes have been prioritised using Scottish Road Maintenance Condition Survey (SRMCS) results, surface texture results, visual inspection, defect history, and prior maintenance history.
"The mechanism for allocating budget to road maintenance is substantially based on the Roads Asset Management Plan (RAMP) model that allocated by area and by road category.
"This year is the first year of a five year phased transition to allocation on an Aberdeenshire-wide needs basis.
Both reports can be downloaded in full from the Aberdeenshire Council website under respective committee links.
