Cuts to road schemes

But the county council will not say what planned road projects could become casualties in this move.

Faced with having to find more cash to repair the damage, the county council is planning to raid funds from planned improvement schemes. This will release millions of pounds for repair works, though the council claims that essential maintenance will not be affected,

Steve Johnson, deputy divisional manager, told the county council's south Chichester county local committee last week that the draft works programme for 1010-11 now looked to be in doubt.

When asked what schemes were contained in the programme and could be affected as a result of the move, a county spokeswoman said: "The draft works programme is still being developed and the final details will not be released until it is approved by the Cabinet Member. However, it is correct to say that the proposed programme for 2010/11 is in some doubt as a significant amount of funding is required to repair roads that have been damaged as a result of the winter."

The county is now preparing a revised programme for West Sussex, which is expected to put all planned footway schemes and all highway improvement schemes on hold.

Mr Johnson said: "The reason for this is that the damage to roads is so great that the funding we need to put the roads back into good repair is not available through normal budgetary sources," He said the deferring improvement schemes across the county would release funds for this urgent work.

Current estimates, based on survey work undertaken, indicated that something like 5m worth of damage was caused by the winter freeze situation.The revised programme is now being put together to go before the cabinet member for highways (Cllr Derek Whittington) during March.

"By deferring footway and highway improvement schemes, we can deal with the legal liabilities we face at the moment, with pot-holes and third party claims," Mr Johnson told the committee."Hopefully, we can deal with the criticism the county council is facing because of the state of our highways."

Mr Johnson stressed that day to day maintenance was not affected by the proposal, which also did not affect traffic regulation orders.

Committee chairman Cllr Mike Hall said this was a pretty dramatic move which was being proposed.

"We are all concerned about pot-holes, and the dangers they cause," he added.

Even before the freeze began, motorists had been complaining about the bad state of roads, especially the Fontwell roundabout in the A27, which is the responsibility of the Highways Agency and has gone unrepaired for several year.

The county council has pointed out that it gets one of the lowest grant settlements from the Government in the country - a situation which has persisted over many years, leaving it squeezed for adequate funding for major projects.

n by JEANNIE KNIGHT

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Cuts to road schemes

Potholes are being repaired at the expense of other planned county projects