Most people would agree that the roads in the Scottish Borders are becoming a mess. Indeed, we constantly hear people mentioning the potholes and poor road markings. Up until now, we, like most others have blamed scottish Borders Council for this, but now we must state our belief that it is not the fault of the Council.

Potholes are springing up everywhere and many of these are deep and may cause a significant hazard. Our main High Street in Peebles from the Eastgate to the Edinburgh Road roundabout is in serious need of resurfacing and your community council has repeatedly raised this with SBC. However, each time we raise our concerns, we are informed that it is unlikely to be repaired before 2028. Surely, this is totally unacceptable. We also have concerns relating to pavements, particularly at this time, that pavement on the Innerleithen Road adjacent to Kerfield Park.

If it is not the fault of SBC, then whose fault is it? It is only possible to level this particular issue squarely at the door of our Scottish Government in Holyrood. Elected SBC Councillors of all persuasions have consistently identified that although, at 3000km, we have a considerably greater quantity of road surface to maintain than urban local authorities such as Edinburgh we receive no additional funding from our Scottish Government to reflect this.

The annual funding settlement is largely based on per head of population, and we have only 116,000 people in the Borders compared with 530,000 for City of Edinburgh Council. Their roads and pavements budget was around £40m last year where ours was around £8m. Edinburgh has only circa 1,500Km of roads [figures provided by elected SBC councillor]. This is a huge disparity and seriously unfair not only to those who live here, but also to those visitors who bring their cars. Based solely on roads if £40M is needed for Edinburgh, then £80M is needed for us.

However, we are told that the backlog of required work on our roads in the Scottish Borders is around £135M (roads and bridges). Probably more if pavements are included. This year, the budget is apparently around a paltry £5M! Clearly there is something badly wrong with our treatment when compared with our capital city. Ratepayers, whether rural or in towns should have every right to expect equal treatment. We have a right to have safe roads and the tourists visiting our region need to see a country that we can be proud of. This writer has concerns on both counts.

Recently, we wrote to SBC to express these concerns and in particular, to ask what they were doing to ensure that the forthcoming Tour de France would be safe and reflect well on both the Borders and our country. The response included the following, which provides no comfort whatsoever.

“As you may be aware Scottish Borders Council has nearly 3000 kilometres of adopted road to maintain across its area. Each year we compile our Planned Surface Treatment Programme from our records of identified sections of carriageway in need of surface treatment. Unfortunately, the overall condition of our road network means that we are only able to carry out Planned Works annually on approximately 1 % of our network, with each site being assessed based on condition, usage, and the road hierarchy. This results in some roads being resurfaced or permanently patched. However, this inevitably means that the remaining identified sections of carriageway must be repaired and maintained using a more temporary type of treatment”.

1%. Seriously! That would be a rolling schedule over 100 years. I for one despair!

Peter Maudsley
Chair, Peebles and District Community Council

As always: support or comment to Anne Snoddy (Secretary PCC)