Road maintenance program back on track soon: Phillips

LODDON Shire expects to have its regular road maintenance program back on track next month.

Operations director Steven Phillips told councillors on Tuesday the program, suspended since the October flood emergency, would be resumed by the end of June.

The exceptional circumstances clause of the program was enacted within days of the October 14 floods.

Mr Phillips said background to that decision was: “The suspension of the road maintenance program is to say that council cannot maintain its road network to its usual standard.

“The community can expect that it will take longer than it normally would for an issue to be fixed on our road network. Routine maintenance inspections were put on hold for three months and have now resumed so staff could assist in the gathering of information for a claim to restore flood damage under the disaster recovery funding arrangements.

“The extent of the impact on council’s ability to return to normal levels of road maintenance is still being assessed.

“In the meantime, council will maintain the network as safe as reasonably possible given the circumstances,” he said.

Mr Phillips said staff had repaired more than 96 per cent of 1200 defects detected from inspections during the March quarter.