5.0 Our maintenance plans for this year
5.1 Our plans for highways maintenance for 2026-27
- Hartlepool Borough Council have currently approved some 34 carriageway maintenance schemes for the current financial year
- The total length of these schemes is just under 7km (just over 4 miles)
- Chester Road involved some reconstruction work carried out
- Six streets required additional binder course treatment (tarmac layer that resides beneath the surface layer)
- A small number of sections (detailed in the table below) may be deferred until 2026/27 if funding levels dictate they cannot be implemented in the current financial year. A significant increase in the cost of raw materials primarily due to the Middle East conflict may impact the number of schemes that can be delivered in forthcoming years.
- A section of the A689 will be undergoing investigations followed by preventative maintenance on the voids between the concrete base blocks in an effort to prolong the life of the carriageway.
- Three footway sections have been proposed for resurfacing (total length approx. 260m) – these are all subject to funding.
- Other potential highway related schemes include various flood relief schemes (seven in total) and two traffic signal replacement / upgrade schemes.
5.2 Full list of planned carriageway and footway works
Appendix A in this document details current planned work on the highway within the Borough of Hartlepool within the current financial year. Please note most of the carriageway works on the table are either complete or scheduled in, the schemes marked with ‘***’ are subject to availability of funding and may be re-scheduled for 2027/28.
5.3 How decisions are made on our maintenance plans
Hartlepool Borough Council compiles its program of works by collecting information from :
- Annual condition survey data
- Highway Safety Inspections
- Engineers local knowledge
- Stakeholder engagement (residents, councillors, local businesses etc)
- Traffic type and volume
On considering the above the five year maintenance plan is modified so that the sections of the road network with the ‘greatest needs’ are considered for maintenance earlier than those areas which are deemed to have a longer lifespan attached to them. The first three items above will fundamentally determine if a stretch of road has markedly deteriorated over a twelve month period which will subsequently allow it to be escalated through the five year programme of works. Subsequently any ‘identified’ locations are subject to annual site inspections at the turn of the year the findings of which are then ultimately used to update the five year maintenance programme. The programme itself is ‘fluid’ and is subject to change if, for example, parts of the network suffer from marked deterioration as a result, of say, extreme weather conditions.