Council in 'utter denial' over state of Edinburgh's roads as less than a third of planned resurfacing work completed

Statistics also show that a pothole takes five days on average to fix.

Pothole Pete visits Minto Street

New figures from the Liberal Democrats suggest less than a third of the council’s planned resurfacing works have actually been completed.

Transport spokesman Kevin Lang said Edinburgh City Council are in “utter denial” about the scale of the problems surrounding the roads in the Capital.

However, Transport and Environment convener Lesley Macinnes said the council will “far exceed” its planned repairs, and any roads missed will be re-prioritised.

Pothole Pete visits Great Stuart Street

Less than a third of the planned roads, said Cllr Lang, have been repaired, with less than 80,000sq metres of roads being resurfaced out of the planned 275,000sq metres after nine months.

He said: “These new figures underscore the woeful failure of SNP and Labour councillors to fix our roads.

“It’s now clear they are miles away from delivering their resurfacing priority plan, with less than a third of projects actually delivered.

“Meanwhile, everywhere you look in Edinburgh, you see potholes and crumbling road surfaces.

“Not only is this dangerous for cyclists and drivers, it’s costing the Council a fortune in compensation claims.

“Worse still, the Council administration seems to be in utter denial in the scale of the problem and it’s failure to solve it. Residents across Edinburgh deserve much better than this.”

Transport and Environment Convener Councillor Lesley Macinnes said: “Our roads team work extremely hard to make sure our roads are safe, with 96% of repairs carried out within their target date and the delivery of a significant number of capital schemes to improve the condition of our streets.

“While some of the projects listed in March 2019 may have changed due to factors like conflicting road works and priority projects added, we will far exceed the volume of work additionally planned, with more than 400,000m² of carriageways and 60,000m² of footways expected to be treated in 2019/20.

“Of course we appreciate the frustration road defects like potholes can cause, particularly if they’ve been there for some time.

“However, there are many factors that come into play when arranging repairs, like traffic management, utilities and recent poor weather conditions and, unfortunately, this can occasionally impact on the time in which a job is completed in a small percentage of cases.

“It’s essential that we direct our limited resources where needed though, so our roads continue to be usable.

“That said, in general, the situation is improving - last year we invested heavily in road renewal projects as part of our £15m spend and more than £1.5m repairing potholes and other improvements – as a result our independently-assessed road condition rating has improved to its best since 2011.”

The comments come as the Evening News’ roads champion Pothole Pete took to the streets of Edinburgh to highlight the state of the city’s roads.

On average, potholes took an average of five days to fix in the Capital in the second half of 2019, figures from the Scottish Conservatives claim.

Statistics from the council, obtained via Freedom of Information requests, shows that it takes the council a full working week on average to repair potholes in damaged roads.

Conservative MSP for the Lothian region Miles Briggs called on the council to invest more to improve the state of the roads.

Mr Briggs said the roads are in such a state of disrepair there are thousands of reports each month.

He said: “Potholes are being made faster than Edinburgh City Council can fix them and some are taking almost three months to be fixed.

“The City of Edinburgh needs proper investment into its roads so that long term solutions can be found to solve the pothole epidemic.”