Cabinet endorses £1.2 million funding for highway improvements
Councillors have endorsed new plans to invest more than £1.2 million into the borough's roads as part of a Government funding package.
Cabinet approved the plans on the back of the Government announcement in December 2024 of additional highway maintenance funding as part of its Plan for Change.
The funding is not just for fixing potholes, but for resurfacing roads and cycleways, repairing broken pavements, maintaining bridges, tunnels, retaining walls, and other structures. The council manages 780km of roads, 73 signal junctions and their road markings, 170 highway bridges and structures, 23,900 street lights, 870 illuminated bollards, 3,160 illuminated signs and 44,000 gullies.
Proposed schemes include key routes in Rainford, Billinge and Seneley Green and Eccleston, such as Mossborough Road, Rainford Road and Gillars Lane, alongside a responsive patching programme across the borough to be determined by condition surveys and resident reports.
In the last 12 months the council has carried out 4,720 repairs to carriageway defects and potholes, which could be reduced by the flexibility provided by this new grant to strike a better balance between long-term preventative maintenance and reactive repairs.
Councillor Kate Groucutt, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Business and Inclusive Growth said: "This extra funding worth more than £1.2 million in total from Government will go towards supporting preventative action for our highway network to reduce the risk of issues like potholes appearing.
"We know the highway network in St Helens Borough is the largest and most visible community asset that the council is responsible for. It is used daily by residents, businesses, and visitors to the borough, and it makes an important contribution to the council's wider priorities.
"Every pound that we invest in preventative maintenance such as surface dressing has the potential to save between £6 and £10 in rebuilding costs later. This plan outlines some key areas where we will look to carry out road surfacing works which we know through data we've seen will help reduce the risk of more costly repairs to things like potholes in the future."
The additional funding would complement the programmes already in place for improvement already agreed by Cabinet in the Highways Capital Programme 2023/27 approved in April 2023 and the Highways Infrastructure Asset Management Strategy approved in June 2022.
This funding is in addition to the LCRCA City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement accepted by Cabinet in April 2023 of £7,020,000 per annum from 2023/24 - 2026/27.
Read the report here: Highways Improvement plans
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