Maintaining our roads and pavements

Maintaining our roads

Surrey County Council is responsible for maintaining approximately 4800 km (3000miles) of roads. Minor repairs such as potholes are repaired throughout the year when they come to our attention.

Along with this we have a planned Highway Maintenance programme where we carry out preventative maintenance treatments such as surface dressing to improve the skid resistance and increase the lifespan of roads. Major maintenance is undertaken where there are problems in the underlying structure of the road. We are currently undertaking a programme of major maintenance known as Operation Horizon, details of the latest programme of works for your area can be found on the Horizon page.

To check if any other maintenance is planned for your area please visit the Roadworks page.

Maintaining our pavements

Surrey County Council is responsible for maintaining over 10 square km of pavement (nearly 4 square miles). Minor repairs such as potholes or raised block paving are repaired throughout the year as they come to our attention.

Alongside this we have a planned pavement maintenance programme where we carry out slurry treatments to take out small imperfections and increase the lifespan of the pavement, or reconstruct pavements where the structure has significantly deteriorated.

Reconstruction of pavements includes replacing block paving with asphalt pavements, which are less of a safety hazard and are easier and cheaper to maintain. Reconstruction schemes will involve replacement of kerb stones which may result in an alteration of height of the pavements.

We can not guarantee the profile of the pavement will stay the same, and access to driveways will remain unaltered once the new surface has gone down. Drives with steep inclines in or out may find that low profile cars find access more difficult.

We have calculated that the backlog of pavement works needed to bring all of Surrey's pavements to a good standard will cost over £80million. We have to prioritise work carefully to ensure that we use limited funds to the best effect.

Our Highway Asset Management Policy, which was approved by Cabinet in June 2016, can be found below.

To check if any pavement work is planned for your area please visit the Roadworks page.

Want to know more?

Surrey's highways are not only made up of roads, but also assets and structures like bridges, crossings, traffic lights, drains, gullies and crash barriers. These things make the roads safer, help them work better and even save lives. These 'assets' need looking after and cost money, so much so that we have to prioritise which ones we spend money on and when.

If you'd like to know more about how we communicate, how much we're spending on highways assets, please read our Asset Communications Plan (PDF).