An ‘apocalyptic picture’ of the future of Orkney’s roads has been painted by council officers, a councillor has said this week.
In a report viewed during a meeting, officers state that to maintain the current quality of the county’s road network a budget of £2.75 million is needed for surface treatments.
The current budget? Just over £1 million.
The report states that if this current budget remains in place, roads will “continue to deteriorate over the long term”.
It continues: “This will result in far greater quantities of defects.”
This comes not long after the council set a 10% council tax rise, and decided to draw £17 million from its reserves so it could maintain services over this year.
However, there have been warnings that it can’t do the same again next year.
The report on roads was presented to Orkney council’s development and infrastructure committee on Tuesday.
Councillors Leslie Manson pointed out figures showing that the council is only providing one-third of what’s needed to maintain the state of the council’s roads.
He congratulated the officers on “fighting their corner” in seeking optimum resources to address the issue.
How does Orkney council’s spending on roads measure up to other councils?
However, he said, in doing so, they’d painted “quite an apocalyptic picture of the future of our roads”.
Orkney has very good quality of roads compared to the rest of Scotland’s council areas.
Mr Manson was curious as to how the islands council spending in this area measures up to other local authorities.
He added: “I would say the positive assessment of our roads is accurate and we do have some the finest roads in the country.
“I’m a bit intrigued. Given the predicted apocalypse, what’s likely to happen to the rest of Scotland?”
The council’s head of neighbourhood services, Lorna Richardson replied.
She said reports published this time last year had indeed noted the high quality of Orkney’s roads.
However, they also said this quality was all relative to how much the local authority had been investing in them.
She also said that all Scottish local authorities are now in the same position with their roads budget as Orkney council.
Kenneth Roy. the council’s team manager for roads support, also weighed in.
He said: “Within the network of authorities we tend to be dealing with, in the north region, many have been cutting back on road maintenance for years.
Some councils have no budget for roads surfacing at all
“We have managed to be very good with our network. This has meant we have managed to maintain our network to the standards that we have now.
“I’m aware that some of these authorities have cut back completely on all surface treatments for the coming years. They have no budget for anything.
“We are, I suppose, grateful that we have an element of surface treatment budget to be moving on with.”
Mr Roy added that a “new product” was being used to treat cracks this week. Tests are due to take place at Kirkwall’s Bignold Park area.
Mr Manson accepted these replies. He also said he’d be worried if Orkney started to “slip down the league tables” for road quality.
He said: “In terms of best value, it’s important that we look at what other councils are doing.
“I would hope we could work out where we stand in terms of addressing our own levels of problems.
“Best value means you have to compare and compete. I would be less happy about the stated underfunding if it meant we were going to start slipping down the league tables.
“If that’s not the case and we’re simply spending less, in line with every other council, then that’s a fact of life we’ve got to swallow.
“But if we’re spending much less comparatively, then that’s a real cause for concern.”
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