Pothole repair work - Find a freedom of information request

1. Please could you provide, for each financial year from 2019-20 to 2023-24:

a)  the name of contractors/companies you have contracts with to undertake pothole repair work.

b) the value of the contract between you and each above contractor/company over last three years for pothole repair work, broken down by year.

c)  the number of instances where each contractor has repaired a pothole, or had a subcontractor repair a pothole

d) the number of instances when you required above referenced contractors to remediate poor pothole repair work carried out by their contractors in the past three years.

e) the amount of money you has claimed back from each above contractor/company over the last three years because of pothole remediation/poor quality repair work, broken down by year.

f) the number of instances where above referenced contractors/companies have had to repair their own pothole repair work (or pothole repair work undertaken by another contractor/company ) within six months of the date of carrying out the original pothole repair work, for the past three years, broken down by year.

If you do not have data for the period requested, please provide it from the earliest available financial year to the most current available at the point of production. If financial year is not available, please provide calendar years instead.
 

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1.a) Lincolnshire County Council has contracted Balfour Beatty as Principle Contractor to undertake our Term Maintenance contract across the county. Balfour Beatty undertake the work with a combination of sub-contractors and in-house workforce.

b) The contract covers all elements of the highways service and has a value of between £45m and £75m dependent on budget and funding. Pothole repairs form part of the reactive element of the service and due to the nature of the repairs, budget is not disaggregated down to this level.

Reactive budgets have been around £6-7m during the period requested and the majority of repairs are potholes, but the budget does vary depending on need and funding packages available.

c) The number of individual jobs for the past three years is:

2023/24 - 36513,

2022/23 - 33274

2021/22 - 37722.

This does not always directly correlate to the number of potholes repaired as there are a number of factors involved. Historical comparison is also not always possible as potholes can be defined and recorded in a number of ways. The information provided is purely the pothole numbers we have defined individual completion data for, on a defect by defect basis. Some potholes will be repaired via other workstreams on a time charge or planned scheme basis, where material quantities but not individual pothole numbers are recorded and thus we do not hold that information for release under FOI

d) For the last three years the number of jobs which have been inspected by Officers and recoded as failed are: 2023/24 - 22,

2022/23 - 33

2021/22 - 11.

However, failures may occur for a number of reasons beyond poor workmanship, for example, often the surface around a repair will fail which isn't a result of poor completion of the individual repair.

The Contractor may also choose to return to a repair if, for example, a temporary repair has been made to ensure the safety defect is corrected before the contractor returns to complete a permanent repair.

e) If a repair has been identified as sub-standard or required a revisit, LCC would not pay for the repair and the contractor would return at their own cost. Therefore, money would not need to be reclaimed.

f) The identified failed repairs were all corrected by the contractor but as previously detailed, there are a number of reasons