Issue - meetings

To update Members on the Highways Maintenance Manual.

To accept the report and to note the observations, and recommend that the Highways, Engineering and YGC Department:

·       puts arrangements in place to notify councillors when a reported problem has been resolved.

·       looks at establishing arrangements to review the standard of inspections.

The report was presented by the Cabinet Member for Highways, Engineering and YGC, Head of Highways, Engineering and YGC Department and the Dwyfor Area Engineer. ⁠Attention was drawn briefly to the following main points:

Members were reminded that the Highway Maintenance Manual had been approved by the Cabinet in July 2023 and that it was now operational.  Attention was drawn to the main objectives of the manual's implementation, namely ensuring that:

·       the Council’s highway asset maintenance procedures comply with current national guidelines;

·       the Council provides a safe and well-maintained highway network;

·       that appropriate maintenance standards are implemented consistently throughout
Gwynedd;

·       that the Council’s standards and approach to implementation are consistent with
other highway authorities within Wales;

·       that the Council will continue to be able to defend third-party claims and legal action by individuals;

·       that future highway maintenance budget allocations are influenced by risk rather than by other factors.

It was confirmed that the manual had been developed to plan how the Council complied with the specific duty under the Highways Act 1980, as well as a number of national codes of practice, to maintain the roads adopted by the Council. ⁠It was detailed that the manual was based on the Highways Asset Management Plan (July 2010), which itself had been influenced by the ‘Code of Practice for Highways Maintenance Management 2005’.

It was noted that the Department was operating based on the Dwyfor, Arfon and Meirionnydd areas, due to the size of the county. It was explained that this was an effective system to respond to road maintenance enquiries on a timely basis, ensuring that the same arrangements and procedures were in place for all areas.

It was confirmed that the manual was used as a daily guide on how to maintain county roads and protected the Council from third party claims and court proceedings. It was emphasised that the Council had received 343 third party claims between 1 April 2016 and 1 April 2024 and that the Council had managed to defend 294 of them. It was detailed that this was a success rate of nearly 86%.

It was explained that every local authority in Wales complied with a new code of practice published in 2016, namely 'Well-managed Highway Infrastructure: A Code of Practice'. It was elaborated that the County Surveyor’s Society Wales consulted with local authorities to formulate nationally consistent schemes to ensure that there were no changes to road conditions when passengers moved from one county to another. It was emphasised that local authorities were establishing a network hierarchy, inspection arrangements, repair system as well as using risk to influence how the budget was allocated, to ensure that there were no major changes among counties.

Specific attention was drawn to clause 7.1 of the manual which noted that road defects were categorised as critical defect, safety defect or maintenance defect. It was noted that the service inspected roads on a regular basis, every month or 3 or 6 months depending on the road class and its  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6