Highway Maintenance
Online Services
- report a pothole
- tree, branch or vegetation overhanging or obstructing pavement
- streetlight fault
- damage to bollards, signs railings or any other street 'furniture'
- report a road or pavement obstruction
- flooding
Transportation Services is responsible for maintaining the roads and pavements of adopted highways (technically known as carriageways and footways respectively). An adopted highway is one where the local authority has taken on the legal responsibility for maintenance. The total length of adopted highways in the Borough of Poole is approximately 500km (350 miles).
About highway maintenance
Maintaining the highway network involves assessing its condition, identifying problems and then prioritising and carrying out the most appropriate work within the budget available.
Highway maintenance can be considered in three main categories:
1. Routine cyclical maintenance
This involves routine work such as emptying road gullies, cleaning road signs and street lights or cutting highway grass verges.
2. General routine maintenance
This work is necessary as a result of the daily use of the highway. This could include filling potholes, repairing damaged street furniture (e.g. fences, bollards, seats, etc.), repairing street lights, renewing road markings, investigating and repairing drainage problems.
To identify the work required, Highway Inspectors regularly assess all the roads in the Borough. Busier roads are inspected more frequently than less busy roads since the likelihood of wear, damage or potential mishap is greater. Where the Inspectors identify problems which could affect safety, work is given urgent priority.
Issues on the highway develop daily and these may require urgent attention. If you see any problems on carriageways or footpaths please report them to us.
3. Structural Maintenance
Structural maintenance is the term used to describe the more significant work required to maintain the highways. Highways deteriorate with both time and usage and eventually reach a point where major work is required. Such work could be to the carriageway (e.g. overlays or reconstruction) as well as the kerbs and footways.
The nature and method of prioritisation of such schemes is important and this can be quite difficult when similar condition roads are competing for limited funding. The process is driven by using the results from independent surveys necessary for reporting Best Value Performance Indicators on highway condition. Information from these independent surveys is assessed during April and schemes are developed in-house to produce an annual programme of structural maintenance works during May each year.
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