£7m investment for roads across Staffordshire

Staffordshire County Council will spend almost £7 million on road improvements across the county.

Over the coming summer months, highways crews will be putting the finishing touches to more than 400km of roads in towns and villages across Staffordshire.

Simon Tagg, Staffordshire County Council’s cabinet support member for transport and the connected county, said crews will be making the most of the warm spell to carry out surface dressing on roads.

He said: “The surface dressing of roads is an essential part of maintaining our highways network and helps ensure roads are safer and fit for purpose for the next 10 to 15 years.

“This year we are investing a further £1.2m and aim to complete more than 740 jobs, which is a 30 per cent increase on last year.

“The nature of surface dressing means crews need the dry weather for the mix to set and last summer we had to battle with the heavy rain and flooding, so we will certainly be pulling out all the stops while this good weather continues.”

As part of the process, a combination of a bituminous material and chips are laid on the road surface. The “surplus” of chips, which are needed to bind the mixture, are then swept away over the following weeks. This also adds skid resistance to “worn” roads improving safety for motorists.

Tagg added: “Staffordshire is a vast rural county and it is important to ensure our roads are kept in good working order for as long as possible.

“Without this preventative treatment, roads would need to be replaced three to four times as often which would be impractical, costly and create far more disruption for members of the travelling public.”