Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 I seek the following information regarding your road maintenance policy.
1) Does your local authority use a risk based approach to the repair of highway defects such as potholes?
Yes. This is detailed in Section 5 of the Highway Safety Policy. Our Highway Safety Policy can be viewed online via the following link:
https://www.devon.gov.uk/roadsandtransport/maintaining-roads/highways-safety-inspections/
2) If yes to Q1, when did you switch to a risk based approach? If no to Q1, what approach do you use?
5th September 2016
3) How does your frequency of monitoring for highway defects, such as potholes, differ for different road types/carriageway hierarchy: as defined in Well-maintained Highways: Code of Practice for Highway Maintenance Management (e.g. motorway, strategic route, main distributor, secondary distributor, link road, local access road)?
The Code of Practice you have referred to in your question is an old one and our current policy which can be viewed via the link above follows the latest recommendations.
4) In what ways is your authority alerted to or detect highway defects such as potholes?
Through fixed safety inspections, public reports by phone or web and DCC highway officers.
5) How do you categorise highway defects, such as potholes, and how are those categories defined?
This can be seen in Appendix 1 of our Highway Safety Policy referred to above
6) For identified highway defects, such as potholes, what are your intervention criteria?
This can be seen in Appendix 1 of the Highway Safety Policy referred to above
7) For the different highway defects categories identified, how quickly to you aim to repair them/what is the repair schedule once they have been entered into the system?
All defects assessed by inspectors follow the risk based approach defined in Section 5 referred to in our response to question 1 above.
8) Have your intervention criteria for highway defects, such as potholes, changed in the last 5 years? If so, please indicate when, and what the previous intervention criteria were.
No