I am regularly contacted by people concerned at the condition of roads and pavements in our area. Every time this happens I contact the council’s roads staff to highlight residents’ concerns and ask that the section of pavement or road people have contacted me about is inspected and repaired or resurfaced.

The roads I have contacted council roads staff about recently include Thorngrove Avenue and Deeside Park. On both these roads large parts of the road surface are clearly beyond repair and need to be resurfaced.

All too often, sadly, what happens is that a pothole or broken area of road surfaced is spot patched. You only have to walk, drive or cycle along many roads in our area to see how long these spot patches last. You can often see areas of road surface which have been spot patched time and time again.

My view is that the council needs to invest more in resurfacing or making proper long term repairs to roads and pavements.

For each of the last five years the Liberal Democrats have proposed at the council’s budget setting meetings – as part of carefully costed, affordable and balanced budget proposals – investing more in road and pavement repair and maintenance. Each time this was rejected by the Labour, Conservative, SNP and Independent councillors.

Most recently in February this year I proposed on behalf of the Liberal Democrats that an additional £3.3 million should be invested during 2017/18 in road and pavement repairs. This would have increased by 150% the budget for this work. This extra investment would have allowed the council to resurface an extra 8.5 miles of road surface or resurface and rekerb an extra 8.5 miles of pavements.

Our proposal for this desperately needed extra investment was again rejected by Labour, Conservative, SNP and Independent councillors.

The Liberal Democrats and I will continue to argue for this much needed extra investment in repairing and resurfacing Aberdeen’s roads and pavements.

Sign up here to receive more news and information from Ian Yuill.

   5 Comments