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Letter from: Ian Griffiths, Little Common, Bexhill

Reading a recent article upon the ESCC’s view of their statutory responsibility for road repair and safety made me smile.

I am a retired local authority head of a technical department with long experience of safe and inexpensive road repairs.

"Any concrete road which has a bitmac skim-coat, will fail at its joints, laterally and longitudinally (eg Birkdale, Bexhill). "

I have been in a long and fruitless correspondence with the ESCC since 2013, concerning their dangerous, inadequate and wasteful policies and specification associated with highway repair.

I have, over that time, dealt with ESCC Highways (which is NOT the ESCC, but their nominated contractor), with ‘customer complaints’, the CEO, the ESCC dept director, his deputy, Mr Glazier the Conservative leader of ESCC and his committee chairman.

Here is what I have learned over the last 9 years:

1. the ESCC will only deal ‘quickly’ with potholes at least 300mm in every direction and at least 40mm deep.

2. Your complaint goes directly to the ESCC’s contractor. (ie you are complaining to the company actually responsible for the complaint!)

3. The contractor, ESCC Highways (shortly to be replaced) is self- supervising/self-regulating.

4. The ESCC direct staff are supposed to randomly inspect some contractor’s repairs every six months. Do they?

5. ‘Urgent’ repairs are only carried out with blobs of bitmac as a ‘temporary measure’, ESCC states that ‘permanent’ repairs are then later carried out.

6. The ESCC reinstatement specification for their own work is much less stringent than that applied by the ESCC to public utilities (gas, electricity, water).

Have you read....:Bexhill and Rother households face paying more in council tax bills

Having worked in Bexhill and Rother in the 1970s and through Thatcher’s cuts to LA’s as dept head elsewhere, I am well experienced in not wasting highway funds, yet keeping them safe.

Any concrete road which has a bitmac skim-coat, will fail at its joints, laterally and longitudinally (eg Birkdale, Bexhill).

Unfortunately none of these failures are wide enough or deep enough to comply with the ESCC’s ridiculous specification for early urgent action. So, the danger to all remains for years.

ESCC has the unmitigated gall, to suggest our current pothole problems are due to this ‘special’ winter.

The highway budget has been underfunded by this Conservative controlled county council for over two decades as a discrete policy of very low council taxes.

We all know we only get what we pay for.

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A reader says: East Sussex County Council's view of their statutory responsibility for road repairs in Bexhill made me smile - but not in a good way.