Potholes: Calderdale councillors say there is no cash to take on borough's unadopted roads

Liberal Democrats urged colleagues to ask highways officers to be instructed to log how many unadopted roads there are in the borough, look at sourcing external funding to help renovate them and assess if some roads would benefit from coming under council ownership.

Coun Abigail Carr (Lib Dem, Warley) said there were probably several hundred roads which were unadopted for a variety of reasons and some of them were in a bad state.

“For some residents, the roads outside their homes are absolutely full of craters and potholes and generally in a really, really poor state of repair,” she said.

“What we are not suggesting is the council takes on that responsibility.

“But it is apparent to understand the use of roads has changed significantly over the years,” she said.

Coun Paul Bellenger (Lib Dem, Greetland and Stainland) said some roads had become unusable and there could be issues, for example impacting on emergency vehicles’ access to those roads.

But the motion was rejected by a majority of councillors.

Deputy leader Coun Tim Swift (Lab, Town) said the scale of work requested from under-pressure officers would be unreasonable and risks raising unrealistic expectations of what the council is able to do.

Coun Swift said his party sympathised and understood why Coun Carr had raised the issue but there were also instances where projects over adoption had been tried in the past but found to be problematic.

Very tight council finances were an issue, he said.

“Clearly this is not the time go the council to take on significant additional responsibilities,” said Coun Swift.

However, there were things it could do and his amendment – which was passed - outlined three of these, including revisiting what powers and obligations the council had over unadopted roads and also recognising where the council had to intervene.

The council could prevent developers from walking away from their responsibilities when they built new homes, and it could improve help and information available to people on the council’s website, said Coun Swift.