Council’s Sink Hole patch up policy causes accident risk and expense.
A Southport Town Centre Councillor has hit out at Sefton Council’s present policy of allowing repeat ‘patch up’ of sink holes in the town’s roads when it is clear that there is a problem underneath the surface which is not going to go away.
Councillor Tony Dawson has just reported the re-emergence of a sink hole in the middle of Virginia Street. He says:
“This is similar to the problem I reported last year further down the same street opposite the entrance to Lidl. There was one patch up then another. By the time they finally got around to fix it properly, the leak had washed away so much soil that they had to close off this busy road for weeks.”
“I would guess that Lidl and its customers were all rightly furious as were the motorists who had to do a half mile detour for quite a while. Let’s hope this one can be sorted more quickly before it goes the same way.”
“Councillor Dawson is exasperated at the approach which Sefton Council has been adopting to this sort of problem to date.
“The Council have told me they allow contractors to do ‘patch up repairs without investigating the cause of the problem. But this just means three repairs before anything happens to address the underlying problem which just resurfaces again and again.”
“Each time this is allowed to happen, the result is potentially dangerous. Besides damage potential for car axles etc, an inadvertent pedestrian trying to cross the road at this spot might put their foot in the hole and twist their ankle flying forward towards passing traffic. Likewise, a cyclist not seeing this sink hole on a dull day or at night could be completely thrown possibly even into oncoming traffic depending upon his/her speed.”
This particular ‘new’ Virginia Street sink hole is already about a foot across and a foot or more deep. When it first emerged last year I was lucky to find a couple of scrap traffic cones and put them to show the hazard while we waited for contractors to come. I was sad to see it just patched as it seemed obvious that they would have to be back.”
I think the approach which Sefton Council seems to be willing to take on this sort of hazard is unsafe in principle. While I am no highway engineer, the shape of these sinkholes caused by underlying broken drains or water mains seems to always take a classic form.”
“The chances that the problem which causes the sink hole will ‘right itself’ appears negligible,” says Councillor Dawson. “This means that the ‘patch-up’ approach cause both more expense and a second or third etc period in which the population of motorists, pedestrians and cyclists are exposed to the hazard.”
“As well as notifying the highways department and traffic police, I have asked the Council bosses to look again at their policy to see if we can have a safer approach and one which also saves money.”
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