£10m of road surfacing work to take place in Suffolk

Suffolk County Council will spend an additional £10 million on road surface dressing before September.

This preventative maintenance work will help avoid potholes forming in future years on the roads that are treated by delivering approximately three million square metres of new surfacing; particularly focusing on rural roads across the county.

This intensive programme of work equates to delivering three times the usual amount of new surface dressing, and is equivalent to dressing 500km of road surface. To put that in perspective, Suffolk has around 6,500km of road network so this year’s work will cover almost 10% of the network. To carry out this work in the most effective manner, surface dressing will take place in the areas of the highest priority, based on the council’s recently adopted asset management approach to highway infrastructure.

Cabinet member for highways and transport at Suffolk County Council, Cllr James Finch, said: “This year’s major investment is about giving ourselves the opportunity to get ahead with our maintenance schedule of works so we can make long term savings and maintain the network for longer, instead of having to carry out repeated short term patch repairs.

“Whilst this work takes place, there may be some short term pain in order to achieve a great deal of long term gain. Maintaining the quality of our roads and infrastructure across Suffolk is one of the council’s highest priorities and echoes the views and feedback that I regularly receive from residents.”