Potholes in North Northamptonshire

Demonstration of new method of repairing potholes by Roadmender Asphalt in Oundle for North Northamptonshire Council and Kier Highways

Transcript

00:00I'm Councillor Matthew Binney. I'm the Executive Member for Highways, Travel and Assets at North

00:04Northamptonshire Council. We're here today in Owndall to see a demonstration of a relatively

00:11new product to the marketplace. It has gone through some testing and development and I very

00:19much feel that now is the time for us to be looking at this product. The way that this product differs

00:26from the kind of traditional pothole repair method that everybody would kind of be used to

00:32seeing around our roads in North Northamptonshire. In fact traditionally what happens is you cut out

00:39the pothole around the pothole, you remove all of the material, you then back fill it with new

00:47material and then also have to seal around the top with something that is called over banding.

00:55The new product is made up of 60% recycled material which is actually made up of reused

01:03truck vehicle tyres and so therefore it's got also a slightly rubberised texture to it.

01:11Now what happens that's different when you carry out a repair using this material, you don't cut

01:18out the damaged area. What you actually do is you back fill it with new material after having

01:26swept out any loose material called detritus. You then use the new product over the top

01:34and it completely seals the area which means that you don't have to use over banding so there's not

01:39the possibility of that failing and of course there's also a reduced risk of the likes of

01:46water ingress into the area. One of the other things that we get is quite a complaint in North

01:50Northamptonshire from residents and it's understandable is that of course when our

01:56highways contractor go out to complete a repair a lot of the road surface surrounding it has already

02:02started to break up but that road surface has not yet met that threshold criteria to carry out a

02:09repair to it and of course the frustration from residents is that then in 6-12 months time

02:16that area then breaks up itself and requires our contractors to come out and carry out a repair.

02:22What the new product allows our contractor or will allow our contractor to do is treat the whole

02:30area which puts a weatherproof seal all over that area and therefore should stop that breakup of the

02:38surrounding area. Far too much of our time is taken up with potholes. Of course the problem

02:45with potholes is that we are as an authority like all authorities up and down the country

02:51we are chasing our tail and that is what we are doing and it's become all time consuming whereas

02:59what we really need to be focused on is we need to be focused on road resurfacing because of course

03:05that is the long-term solution. Pothole repair is a short-term solution.

03:11Now what this product will potentially do is give us that breathing room.