How many Sheffield potholes have been filled in last five months - as councillor says it's just the start
It is hoped the increase repairs will help heal community spirits
Work to tackle Sheffield’s pothole crisis has seen more than 2,000 filled over summer, two-thirds of all reported issues.
At the end of April this year, there were 3,784 potholes waiting to be filled in Sheffield, new data has revealed.
From September 1, this had dropped to just 1,238 - a 67 per cent reduction.
Mark Rusling, Sheffield Labour’s lead for the environment - who took over responsibility for the city’s potholes earlier this year - has celebrated the success, but admits “it’s not job done.”
“If you drive around, you can see that there are streets that were previously pretty difficult to drive down and now are much better,” he added.
“You can see significant numbers of streets that have been properly resurfaced or are in the process been done over the next couple of months.
“So, I think credit where credit's due, it's not job done, but it is on a clear trajectory.”
The latest figures come after Labour councillors announced a pothole ‘reporting blitz’ in July, with hopes of putting additional pressure on contractor Amey to take action on issues that have been ignored.
Amey will be attending a Sheffield City Council committee meeting where they will be answering direct questions on pothole repairs on Friday, September 18.
And while Coun Rusling says that there have been “interesting” conversations behind the scenes to deal with problems, he doesn’t want to ignore the amount of work that’s been done over what has been one of the hottest summer in recorded history.
“These guys have been out there in 35C heat filling out these potholes, so I would say thank you to them,” he continued.
Moving forward Coun Rusling hopes to address scheduling issues which mean minor problems on a single street are fixed one at a time, rather than being handled during one visit, as well as updating systems for reporting potholes to provide more transparency on how council services are responding and when.
There are also plans to host regular public meetings with Amey officials and ward councillors where “hyper-local” issues can be raised.
He went on to say that solving the backlog benefits everyone, adding that most of the city’s roadworkers live in Sheffield and are “literally fixing their own communities.”
Roads in Sheffield have been persistently raised as a point of contention among residents, with Coun Rusling saying that while campaigning for the May election the state of the city’s streets was brought up on “at least every other door.”
During her maiden speech as council leader after those election - in which Labour faced the loss of 13 seats - Fran Belbin addressed this, saying that people are frustrated at having their “tyres ripped to shreds by potholes” and the council would be making changes to address this.
Coun Rusling reflected on a conversation he had on the doorstep of a woman in Wincobank when he talked about the importance of this work.
“There was a sense of sorrow and she just said ‘I feel my area is going downhill’,” he continued.
“She was looking out and it was a variety of things, it was a bit of fly-tipping, but it was mostly the potholes.
“What she took from that was one main thing - she didn’t think that the public sector could do anything.
“She just didn’t think it would improve and nothing anybody said, me or any of the other parties, would make her change her mind.
“I have some sympathy for that view because if you watched your area decline you would think that.”
He fears that these failings have “opened up space for bad faith actors” to sow division with increasingly extreme rhetoric on topics like immigration - only leading to a further loss of community spirit.
“Pot holes on one level matters because it shows if your area is better or in decline, but on another level it’s even more important than that,” he went on to say.
“It’s the future of the public sector and can we get out of this doom spiral of blaming others for things that are nothing to do with them - particular that racist doom spiral of pointing at problems and saying ‘this is because of immigrants’.”
Amey will be attending an extraordinary Environmental Services and Regulation Policy Committee at Sheffield City Council on Friday, September 18 at 10am. to answer direct questions on pothole repairs.