Special lorries take to the streets to tackle Shropshire’s potholes

Two specialist lorries have taken to the Shropshire streets to help tackle the high number of potholes on the county’s roads.

The newly-refurbished Roadmaster vehicles are currently in the Shrewsbury area but will be used across the county in the coming days and weeks.

With the Roadmaster vehicles at the Longden Road depot in Shrewsbury are: John Link (Kier); Councillor Steve Davenport; Lucy Bailey (Kier); Gavin Andrew (Kier)

The vehicles use compressed air to blow water or dirt out of a pothole that needs repairing and then fill it with hot bitumen and chippings.

The repair is compacted by a roller and sealed with a layer of surface dressing – meaning a better quality of repair.

Meanwhile, Shropshire Council’s new highways contractor Kier have been working flat-out to clear the backlog of potholes.

• Kier currently have 35 teams treating/repairing potholes across the county – supported by eight traffic management teams, who help to control traffic while work is carried out.
• Since 5 April Kier have carried out a total of 572permanent repair ‘jobs’ across the county. A ‘job’ generally involves treating/repairing a large number of potholes.
• This includes 241 emergency jobs – usually at this time of year we would expect 60-100 over the same period.
• In the past two weeks Kier have used 20 tonnes of pothole repair material to make potholes safe.
• And in just four days Kier have used 200 tonnes of hot rolled asphalt to make permanent first-time fixes.

Steve Davenport, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways and transport, said:

“Believe it or not, I hate potholes as much as anyone and share people’s anger and frustration. I’ve never known things to be so bad, and many of our roads have been in a terrible state over the past few months following the severe winter weather.

“But we’re determined to sort things as soon as we can and, working with Kier, we’re working flat out to treat the exceptionally high number of potholes that have appeared this year.

“Kier have high numbers of people out across the county every day, repairing hundreds of potholes.

“And the arrival of the Roadmasters will make a huge difference and help us to repair potholes more quickly, and with a better quality of repair.

“We’re confident that we’ll soon have tackled the backlog of potholes – but people can still help us by reporting any that they come across.”

To report a pothole go to shropshire.gov.uk/potholes or call 0345 678 9006.