£60m needed to fix our crumbling roads

Council earmarks £10m over four years

Oldham’s crumbling roads need £60 million of repairs to bring them all up to top condition.

Every year the council spends £1.7 million for highway claims for slips, trips and falls, and pothole and road defects, and only has £1.3 million for everyday repairs.

The harsh winter last year made things worse — it had to increase pothole gangs from one to six to get over the worst of the damage.

Now the council has agreed to spend £10 million over the next four years, to start to bring roads up to average condition compared with the whole of Greater Manchester.

The spending was approved at the last council meeting and the details have now been made public.

The money is from what the council describes as “prudential borrowing” and is part of a £23 million capital spending scheme.

The report shows that the number of local unclassified roads which fell into the red category (those in the worst condition) steadily increased and are now almost a quarter of the total.

Over a third of footpaths and 8 per cent of A-roads are also rated as red.

Roads which are still classed as amber, but steadily deteriorating, are getting worse at a rate of 4 per cent a year.

Manchester Road, Middleton Road and Ripponden Road are the first A-roads suggested for repairs.

But surveys, visual inspections and complaints from the public and councillors, plus the number of requests for Pothole Mole — the council’s rapid response repair team — will also be used to decide priority.

Schedules will also be checked against other work on retaining walls, school safety zones and by utility companies to make sure the new surfaces stay undisturbed for as long as possible.




To report a pothole ring 0161-770 1685 or email pothole.mole@oldham.gov.uk



When a report is called in outside normal office hours, the details will be taken by the council’s First Response staff and passed on to the unit.