It is now the fifth month since Amey plc became the supplier for Gloucestershire County Council highway services. What has changed during this time?
Out on the road you see shiny new vehicles with the Amey logo and lots of potholes have been marked up for filling and many have indeed been filled. The selection of potholes that make the short-list for filling are still as random as ever, some not meeting the criteria selected others exceeding it ignored. There appears to be an insistence to marking up and filling individual holes even when there are many in one area. It would appear that cost effective large area patching has gone. This short sighted attempt to play the numbers game will back fire during the winter when the road system will collapse into a deeper state of disrepair.
It would also appear that there are technical issues. The County Council system and the Amey system are not yet fully integrated and for you and I this means that road issues submitted on-line are being delayed or lost. When reporting an issue on-line you now receive an automated email with an AF prefixed reference number. Someone behind the scenes then has to transfer this information onto the Amey system and if you are lucky you get a second email with a new reference number on it. Those reported issues that are making it between systems are now taking up to a week to be transferred. This leads to delays in having the problems inspected and actioned leaving potentially dangerous situations on our roads.
The on-line reporting has also been dumbed down, you can no longer upload pictures of the defect, the map often doesn’t work and you can no longer query an existing report. For months now anyone trying to query an issue is met with a screen asking them to either “email gcchighways@amey.co.uk or call in on 08000 514 514 with your reference number to get an update.” If you email for an update don’t expect an answer, after repeated non answered emails I eventually cc’d Vernon Smith (County Councillor, Roads and Flood) and Scott Tompkins (Head honcho of Highways in Glos) and then unsurprisingly got some answers.
In all from the tax payers view things have not yet improved. It would appear that internally many issues still have to be resolved before we can expect any improvement and full resources directed to OUR roads.
Email trail trying to find out the outcome of just three on-line reports.
To me
Steve thanks for email, and letting me know.
Will ask Local.Highways.Manager. to chase up for you.
Vernon
Thank you for your email which I received yesterday to investigate. I apologise that you have not heard anything further regarding the incidents you reported and appreciate how frustrating it is that you have not been updated. I have reviewed these and spoken to the Local Highways Steward to understand the status of them.
With regards to the A38 flooding issue, there is a work order in place for a jetter. This work as it is being programmed with other jobs in the area, I will endeavour to let you know once we have a date confirmed.
Unfortunately the pothole report at Alkerton and the overgrown cycle path did not reach the Local Highways Stewards to investigate. I have captured this as a lesson learnt and further training has been undertaken with the staff to ensure this does not happen again. I have also implemented further controls to ensure better monitoring is in place of the status of customer reports. These issues have been passed to the Local Highways Steward for investigation and I will provide an update for you.
Once again I apologise for the lack of update on these issues.
With regards to the web reporting system, we currently working with the software supplier to implement the web reporting system with the aim to get this in place by the end of July.
Kind Regards
Leighanne
Reference 11008531 – Alkerton
Eastington towards Claypits, Especially between Eastington sign and John Stayte Services turning Road id – response from the Inspector as follows “Road inspected on 5th June 2014 as part of routine inspection in line with GCC Highways Inspection Policy. All actionable safety defects would have been raised. Many potholes do not meet intervention levels. The road is due for future patching works”.
Reference 11008533 – Cycle Path overgrown
This was inspected by the Area Highway Representative and a defect/job raised on the 19th June. The order is an instruction to strim back both sides of the footway and cut back hedges with a target date for completion of 18th July 2014.
I hope above answers your queries but please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance.
Kind regards
Tracy Rudge
Thank you for your e-mail regarding the Gloucestershire County Council Web reporting system.
We have been working with Gloucestershire County Council and the System Provider and are making substantial progress in re-establishing the report-it facility despite encountering problems along the way which were out of our control.
We are currently working on the retrieval element and will then be in a position to carry out further testing before going live.
Thank you for enquiry and if I can be of further assistance regarding this matter please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards
Gloucestershire's Highways 