Plans
Overall strategy
The Transport Asset Management Plan (TAMP) was approved by the Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport on 10 June 2014 and identified the key strategic priorities of the county council, as the highway authority for Lancashire, during the period 2015/16 to 2029/30.
A fundamental principle of the TAMP was to move away from the philosophy of tackling 'worst first' in favour of an approach whereby the underlying condition of the network was addressed via the use of early intervention preventative maintenance strategies as we believed this would enable us to make more efficient use of our resources.
The TAMP adopted a flexible approach to addressing maintenance backlogs and three separate five-year delivery programmes were identified to address the following priorities:
- Phase 1, April 2015 until March 2020, target A, B and C roads
- Phase 2, April 2020 until March 2025, targeted Unclassified Rural and the Unclassified Urban networks whilst maintaining the A, B, C road condition.
The condition data for all of our assets is being reviewed at present in order to shape the priorities for Phase 3 (April 2025 until March 2030). As an interim the focus for 2025/26 is to maintain the A, B, C road condition, address the potholes though a proactive and a sustainable responsive approach, ensuring longevity of repair, whilst continuing to use a risk-based approach to maintaining our other assets, such as street lighting.
Best practice, innovation and efficiency
Lancashire is committed to working smarter and more sustainably in maintaining our highways. We are using materials that contain recycled plastics to fit potholes and, where possible, using low carbon foam mix and in situ recycling and have trialled the use of bio binders. Employing 'safe dig' techniques has also reduced occurrences of cable strikes. Lancashire is part of the East Ridding LiveLabs2 project and is looking at innovative ways of decarbonising the Public Realm. Using AI to support defect identification. Reprocured our Asset Management system to give us greater visibility of our asset, manage the life cycle and plan maintenance around the asset.
Specific plans for 2025/26
In the financial year 2025/26 we aim to:
- Undertake 85 miles of surface dressing and 47 miles of resurfacing for carriageways
- Undertaking 18.5 miles of footway preservative treatments.
- For Bridges and structures, we will:
- Complete the £2m Derby Street railway bridge strengthening and safety project A570, Ormskirk.
- Delivery of the £1.6m of the B6243 Grimsargh Skew bridge widening works as part of the Bus Service Improvement Plans
- Completion of the £8m Old Tram Bridge Active Travel project in partnership with Preston City Council as part of the Levelling Up/MHCLG programme.
- £3m on identified maintenance projects including £0.5m Strengthening to Bradford Bridge near Clitheroe
- Commencement of work on £3m Haslingden Road retaining wall collapse in Hyndburn
- Delivery of £0.5m vehicle restraint barrier replacement programme
- Delivery of innovative safety defect repairs using a new turnkey solution
- renewing 385km of white lining
- replacing 1800 street lighting columns
- traffic signal junctions and pedestrian crossings:
- 4 Junction Refurbishments, 8 Overheight Warning Sign Replacements & approximately 60 LED Retrofit schemes at pedestrian crossings.
- 9 Junction Refurbishments & approx. 20 other junctions receiving some kind of intervention such as signal hardware changes as part of the BSIP programme.
- 23 further LED Retrofit Schemes and 6 with signal hardware changes
- Aiming to cyclically clean 158,000 gullies
Streetworks
Lancashire County Council (LCC) will ensure that a forward plan of all resurfacing schemes is shared with Utility Companies via multiple communication channels. These channels will include but not limited to Permits (statutory s.58 Process) in Street Manager, Quarterly Co-ordination Meetings and email notifications to the Utility forward planning teams.
It is important that LCC ensure early engagement is undertaken to prevent the need for any Utility to excavate in the newly resurfaced road(s). Legislation allows for a number exemptions, though through proactive engagement these will be minimized and be an exception.
All works that are required within a newly resurfaced road will be rigorously challenged, even if the works fall within the exemption criteria to ensure that Highway Asset is protected at all times.
Climate change, resilience and adaptation
Decarbonising maintenance operations
We continuously apply collaborative working with our supply chain partners, trade bodies, specialist groups, public sector organisations and academia, with the objective of implementing best practice and use of new innovative low carbon highways materials and associated initiatives within our resurfacing schemes.
Our materials standards and specifications contained within our contracts are regularly updated to accommodate low carbon materials. The use of lower carbon Warm Mix Asphalt mixtures is our standard approach for materials selection. We have a dedicated contract for the use of low carbon cold lay recycled materials and for use of recycled tar bound materials.
Our annual highways programme requires preventative and preservative maintenance treatments thus significantly reducing the carbon footprint. Regular new product trials are undertaken and subsequently accommodated within highways schemes. Working jointly with our supply chain partners, LCC has developed a carbon content measuring tool to estimate and record the carbon content of the various resurfacing mixtures and treatments used within the annual capital works programme. The use of Artificial Intelligence is being trialled to predict behaviour and improve the management of potholes. The LCC palette of materials and materials matrix is regularly updated to accommodate and specify the use of durable low carbon materials on all highway schemes where feasible. Our contracts require the provision of Environmental Product Data with carbon content of materials to be supplied where available. Future schemes are intended to accommodate low energy plant and vehicles.
Climate change risks and resilience
To help manage or risks and improve resilience we:
- Undertake scour assessments on all of our bridges to address issues on those susceptible to scour. We also use the resilient route network to weight maintenance priorities in order to ensure we keep this valuable network open.
- Are working alongside the Lead Local Flood Authority the highways team continues to identify areas for improvement to help prevent flooding
- Are developing and implementing Sustainable Drainage (SuDs) solutions were practicable.
- Prioritise maintenance on our Resilient Route Network Resilient route network - Lancashire County Council to ensure we keep Lancashire moving.
- When notified of severe weather events operate local hubs to control and co-ordinate response.
Additional information on plans
You can find out more about the areas of carriageway we will be resurfacing in your area, and other aspects of road maintenance, by visit our webpage: