Committee approves prioritised roads capital programme for Caithness

Members of the Caithness Committee have today (Wednesday 9 February) agreed a list of prioritised structural overlay/inlay works and surface dressing schemes that will be funded out of the Capital Budget allocation for 2022/23

The actual 2022/23 capital roads budget allocation for Caithness is still to be finalised but based on the previous financial year and analysis of road condition survey results it is expected to be similar to the 2021/22 budget which was £1,202,581

The report approved by members today identified 114 current priority repair areas across Wards 2 and 3.

Chair of the Caithness Committee, Raymond Bremner said: “Following the spending in full of the allocated capital funding for this current year, we were pleased to receive the updated capital roads’ listing today. We are absolutely committed to making sure that we do the same in the next financial year. We are aware of the importance attached to local roads by our rural communities and we need to ensure that we do as much as we can with the money that we get. We know that we don’t have all the funding we need to do everything we want and reviewing the capital roads’ listing helps us allocate funding according to priority.

“It is important that as a committee we are as transparent as possible about the decisions made and the scale of the challenge before us. We need to make sure that our capital allocation is managed well to bring real benefits to the communities we represent. We will continue to do the best we can with the resources we have.”

Meanwhile with more snow forecast over the next few days the winter roads service currently being carried out by local crews across Caithness is continuing. The list of prioritised projects approved along with the report presented to the committee is available here  - (Item 8)