In Defiance of Kent Highways*

I come not to praise the maintenance of the roads and streetlights in Shepway, but to bury them.

Shepway's roads and streetlights are maintained (occasionally) by Kent Highways (http://www.kent.gov.uk/transport-and-streets/transport-and-road-planning/kents-transport-vision/) - a part of Conservative Kent County Council (http://www.kent.gov.uk). Kent Highways has had lots of money and reorganisations spent on it over the last few years - some £17.8 million spent for example on a recent reorganisation of their depots.

But however much they spend on moving their equipment around, they still seem to be very little actual use at the basics, such as keeping streetlights on, or improving our roads.

To take a recent example of dealing with Kent Highways, a Shepway primary school have been repeatedly reporting broken streetlights on the road outside their school for over three months. As of today, the lights are still out. The road is a narrow, dark and bendy one, and the darkness creates a significant hazard to all road users and the children. Three months of chasing to get two streetlights fixed in the winter with dark evenings, outside a primary school. Kent Highways: FAIL.

In January, after a "ward walk", my wife and I reported 50 broken streetlights or road bollards. Leaving aside that 50 broken lights in just two wards suggests that someone in charge of maintenance has taken their eye completely off the ball, we received - pretty much by return - a reference number for the lights.

One of the reports was for a block of ten lights all out in Military Road, Cheriton (ref:16243946 for Kent Highways reference number fans). And we waited. And chased. And waited. Eventually - six weeks later - with none of those lights still on, we finally got a reply back from Kent Highways. This report was for ten lights, remember. The reply read:

"Reference 16243946 needs a new lantern and the order is currently with our suppliers."

Six weeks to fix ten lights, and they tell me they've ordered a single new lantern? It had better be a good lantern to repair ten lights. I guess it's being manufactured at Hogwarts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogwarts).

In exciting news, in the last few days, two of the ten lights are now on. ALL DAY. Terrific. However, when Kent Highways eventually try to blame the power supply to the lights and pass the blame elsewhere, at least I now know the power IS working (or alternatively, they fitted two new lanterns that actually WERE made at Hogwarts).

Kent Highways lost its last permanent Director some time ago (maybe he fell down a pothole), and is currently led by an interim Director of Highways. This sort of decisive management and control is presumably just what Kent County Council believe is needed when dealing with a failing organisation - and they couldn't be more wrong. Kent Highways needs urgent, serious, dedicated action - and it needs it now.

According to Kent's OWN the report (http://www.kent.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/5A8CDF82-3DB2-4179-BB8B-583DDADCBA1A/0/app3tamp.pdf):

• the average highway road life cycle (time from building until full replacement) is now 174 years
• the average footpath average life cycle is 226 years. A footpath built in 1782 (some 20 years before the construction of the Martello Towers and Royal Military Canal to protect us from Napoleon!) would be, on Kent's figures, due to be replaced round about now...
• 317 years life cycle for drainage gullies and pipes
• 79 years life cycle for signs and bollards
• 148 years life cycle for safety fences
• 27 years life cycle for a road line marking

The report was written a couple of years ago, but actually, that's likely to make the REAL costs of repairs (and therefore backlogs) higher rather than lower. On top of that, in Shepway don't forget that Romney Marsh in particular has many unadopted roads which Kent have not taken responsibility for and therefore don't even make it into these figures!

Kent's roads are not falling behind - they're falling apart. It's time Kent Highways, and Kent County Council, got a grip.

• The individual staff from Kent Highways that I have spoken to or have exchanged email with have generally been helpful. It's the organisation as a whole that seems broken, not the work of staff.

[Update: 10 March 2009: In a burst of activity, on Tuesday 10th March, contractors were working in Military Road and have got the majority of the lights on there - over two months after the problem was reported.

In Horn Street, old streetlights have now been removed and there are more lights working in the road, but still two outside the school are not working due to a "cable fault" which they hope to resolve "soon".]