Oops: Haringey Council fails to meet its own pothole repairs target

They’ve clearly got something about the ratio 1 in 3 over at Labour-run Haringey Council. It was 1 in 3 phone calls from residents that Haringey Council didn’t even answer. It was one photo that showed three things Haringey Council gets wrong with potholes.

Now it turns out that the blitz on potholes announced earlier this year was rather more a PR blitz than a repairs blitz for only one in three potholes that made it into Haringey Council’s records* were repaired on time:

Figures revealed by Haringey Liberal Democrats show that Labour’s pothole blitz in Haringey has failed. Only a third of potholes reported between May and the end of October had been fixed within the 7 day target.

The pothole blitz was announced with great fanfare in May this year. The announcement followed years of complaints by local residents and a campaign by Liberal Democrats councillors to improve the state of roads in the borough.

Labour council admitted there was a serious problem with pothole repairs in the summer and that their policy of not fixing potholes until they were 6cm deep, and leaving deeper potholes for up to a month before fixing them was not working saying “the current (pothole) intervention levels…are at the limit of what is acceptable should the council have to defend an injury or claim.” The admission came after the case of a man who suffered brain injuries as a result of tripping over a pothole in Haringey.

However, the pothole blitz, which was supposed to turn the problem around, has failed with only 35% of potholes fixed in the target of a week from May to October.

Of course, if Haringey Council was rather more efficient with dealing with reports in the first place, rather than frequently making a long-running, resource-wasting saga out of straightforward issues, then it would have the resources to do rather better at hitting its own self-proclaimed targets. As it would too if it avoided self-inflicted costly blunders such as:

At least the Liberal Democrats have managed to get Council Tax frozen for four years in a row in Haringey, putting some sort of lid on what money Haringey wastes. Now if only the council started spending its money really effectively…

UPDATE: A quick check through the archives shows that this isn’t the first time a Haringey Council pothole blitz has failed.

* I phrase it that way because regular readers will know how often Haringey Council tries to bat back reports of problems with erroneous explanations such as not knowing where the borough boundary is or health and safety scares.