North Yorkshire roads set for £10m surface work - here's when programme will begin

Each year, North Yorkshire County Council invests more than £10m in improving stretches of the county’s 5,800 miles of roads.

The authority says surface dressing is a quick, efficient and cost-effective way of maintaining skid-resistant and waterproof road surfaces, helping to prevent deterioration and extending the life of the road by up to ten years and restoring a uniform appearance following utility works.

The surface dressing programme forms part of the essential roads maintenance the county council continues to deliver during the Covid-19 outbreak to ensure that key workers who need to travel to provide crucial services or deliver vital food and other supplies can do so with confidence.

The programme is scheduled to begin on May 4 and will run throughout the summer.

County Cllr Don Mackenzie, Executive Member for Access, said: “It is important that the standard of our roads is maintained to support the NHS staff, social care workers, teachers, delivery drivers, bus operators and others providing essential services.

"The fact that traffic levels are currently reduced to a minimum means our work can be carried out quickly, efficiently and with little or no disruption.

“We take the safety of our employees and contractors very seriously, so will ensure that guidance on social distancing is observed during the surface dressing programme, as it is during the other essential maintenance work we are undertaking at the moment.

“We have reviewed and reworked this year’s surface dressing schedule so that we will focus initially on rural roads where the locations facilitate social distancing more easily.”

Ensuring social distancing means there will not be letter drops to properties in areas where surface dressing is to take place, but information boards will be put up at each site.

Click here for more information about surface dressing, including what to do if surface dressing takes place on your street.

The work is subject to weather conditions.

A message from the Editor

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world.

But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you.