The Highways Agency (the people responsible for the state of the UK’s roads) have announced a plan to save money. You can read about it here.
Currently if a member of the public complains about a pot hole on a major road the Highways Agency are duty bound to repair it (throw on a couple of shovels full of Tarmac and flatten it).
They have instigated a new rule. If the pot hole is smaller than a soup bowl then they won’t bother. Technically a soup bowl is 4cm deep by 15cm wide. By avoiding the work they will avoid the cost.
This begs a number of questions:
- Are they currently filling every hole? Or just everything bigger than a tea cup?
- Who agreed to the change in specification? Will I see a fall in my road tax bill in return?
- How will they know if it is 4cm by 15cm without going to look at it?
- If they go and look and it is smaller, will they then ignore it?
- What happens next winter? Won’t the freeze thaw make the holes bigger?
- What happens when a lorry goes over the pot hole?
- Is it cheaper to fill big holes next year than small holes this year?
I won’t pretend to be a civil engineer. I don’t know the answers. Clearly it is senseless to send a lorry full of Tarmac to fill a tea spoon sized hole and maybe a soup bowl is the right size to worry about.
I do worry though. If a customer complains about something, avoiding the issue is probably not the best strategy.
Sticking your head in the sand won’t make it go away.
Image by katclay
Read another opinion
I don’t see my road tax dropping either
I am not sure it s this simple is it? There must be an optimum point. I think that for most service delivery issues need to think about what the optimum is. Where do you balance cost against customer service?