Are Caithness roads now safe after council patch job?
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Highland Council says it has "completed the current programmed works" on the main Wick/Thurso road – although long stretches of potholes still lie along parts of it.
Many badly eroded surfaces have been patched near Milton and Stirkoke, but it was evident to drivers on the A882 during the past week that there were still potholed areas further on at Oldhall.
In February, a monster pothole close to this area destroyed the tyre of a young Halkirk woman's car in an incident she described as "really, really scary".
Terri Munro was travelling back home after a shopping trip to Wick and said: "All I could think of was the worst when I hit it and got such a shock."
Council leader Margaret Davidson said last week that the impact of the pandemic had delayed much of the work, but now the spell of severe weather is over the "focus can return to completing the programme of repairs and improvements".
However, a council spokesperson said on Monday: “Highland Council has completed the current programmed works on the A882 for the time being.
"Pothole repairs are always ongoing across Caithness and as much permanent repairs are made as is possible. There are, however, always occurrences when temporary ‘cold tar’ fixes have to be made."
Local Highland councillor Willie Mackay said that the road repair programme across the county would have to be prioritised according to the resources available. His colleague, Wick and East Caithness councillor Raymond Bremner, talked of having "a number of conversations" with council officers in respect of the condition of the county's roads.
Councillor Bremner said: "Members of the public are right to be concerned and wondering when the council will manage to attend their particular area. Some of the repairs that have been undertaken in Caithness have been of an excellent quality and are very welcome."
But the councillor drew attention to some other areas where pothole fixes were "not of the quality we are looking for".
"We need repairs to last longer and to be more permanent. It’s one of the reasons we have recently invested in a hot-box in Caithness – something we haven’t had here and that our roads teams were saying would be very useful in providing an improved quality of repair.
"There are areas where I know the council does have to undertake temporary patching with hard-tampering until we get round to those areas to do a more permanent repair while we concentrate on poorer-condition areas with a more permanent repair in the meantime."
Councillor Bremner drew attention to some of the "cold tar patches" that have been done in Wick and said these were usually good as a temporary measure.
Referring to a picture of a cold tar patch job at West Banks Avenue in Wick, he said it looked good after the pothole was swept out and hard-tampered with the tar and other problem areas such as Union Street were now being looked at.
"The main permanent patching that we need to do, needs to be done right – we have raised this as an issue."
Highland Council has provided an extra £10 million on top of the budget of £20m for this year's roads programme and the same is already committed for next year. There is also an extra £9.6m, an element of which can be used to repair roads.
Councillor Bremner added: "I asked for the whole roads infrastructure to be referred to the council’s redesign board. This is now happening this month.
"The outcome of that review, which will include setting up a task force, will help determine the strategy and the finance required to continue to recover the roads infrastructure and to ensure that it is a sustainable strategy."
He said that a listing of all capital road works is being discussed with Caithness members to highlight the areas that need treatment.
Motorists can report potholes on the council’s website at www.highland.gov.uk/report
