Wave of Harrogate district road repairs to aid key workers

The annual summer programme of surface dressing that prolongs the life of miles of road in North Yorkshire each year is scheduled to begin next month.

The surface dressing programme forms part of the essential roads maintenance the county council continues to deliver during the Covid-19 outbreak to ensure that key workers who need to travel to provide crucial services or deliver vital food and other supplies can do so with confidence.

Each year, North Yorkshire County Council invests more than £10 million in improving stretches of the county’s 5,800 miles of roads.

Surface dressing is a quick, efficient and cost-effective way of maintaining skid-resistant and waterproof road surfaces, helping to prevent deterioration and extending the life of the road by up to ten years and restoring a uniform appearance following utility works.

The programme is scheduled to begin on May 4 and will run throughout the summer.

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County Coun Don Mackenzie, executive member for access, said: “It is important that the standard of our roads is maintained to support the NHS staff, social care workers, teachers, delivery drivers, bus operators and others providing essential services.

"The fact that traffic levels are currently reduced to a minimum means our work can be carried out quickly, efficiently and with little or no disruption.

“We take the safety of our employees and contractors very seriously, so will ensure that guidance on social distancing is observed during the surface dressing programme, as it is during the other essential maintenance work we are undertaking at the moment.

“We have reviewed and reworked this year’s surface dressing schedule so that we will focus initially on rural roads where the locations facilitate social distancing more easily.”

Ensuring social distancing means there will not be letter drops to properties in areas where surface dressing is to take place, but information boards will be erected at each site.

For more information about surface dressing, including what to do if surface dressing takes place on your street, visit www.northyorks.gov.uk/surface-dressing.

The work is subject to weather conditions.

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