Promises! Promises! The Road to Ruin

ELECTION COMMENTARY (PART ONE) by JED FORRESTER

I see the campaign leaflets from candidates keen to secure a perch at Scottish Borders Council for the next five years have started pinging through our letter box.

Here in Jedburgh the Conservatives - they were in joint charge of council services from 2017 until 2022 - and the Scottish National Party who formed the 'official opposition' have already provided us with their respective fanciful lists of promises should we decide to vote for them. No doubt the other political groups won't be far behind.

I was particularly intrigued by the Tories' "five priorities for Jedburgh & District", particularly the pledge regarding our appalling roads and pavements. As a motorist who frequently has the misfortune to judder over the lower half of Jedburgh's Oxnam Road on an almost daily basis I'd certainly welcome some extra cash being used to fill in the widening craters.

And if your suspension survives the Oxnam Road ordeal then why not treat it to a trip of torture across the Howdenburn junction (opposite the former primary school site) where the surface resembles a thoroughfare in Kyiv after a blast from Putin's artillery.

For Oxnam Road and Howdenburn substitute virtually every other street or highway in the royal burgh. Wherever you roam underfoot conditions are simply shocking.

Our Tory hopeful tells us: "Over the last five years we have increased our spending on roads but we need to go further. We also need to develop easier ways to report defects so that repairs can take place quicker".

The situation in the real world is somewhat different. 

Shortly before ending their five-year term at the helm the joint administration at Newtown St Boswells voted through (and heralded) a roads budget which they claimed would be worth an estimated £95 million over the next ten years.

But what they forgot to mention was the small matter of the Borders roads repairs backlog which  is in urgent need of a mere £97.280 million to wipe it out, according to information released in response to a Freedom of Information request. So the new budget will not even halt the decline let alone deliver noticeable improvements.

Scottish local government benchmarking statistics show the very low position occupied by the Borders council in a national league table on roads infrastructure spending.

The data covers all 32 local councils, and the returns for 2021 make for depressing reading from a Borders viewpoint. No less than 37 per cent of our 'A' class roads are in need of attention, a larger proportion than in 2017 while the Scottish average is down at 30 per cent. The Borders percentage is the third highest in the country.

The situation on local 'B' class roads is equally unsatisfactory with 40% in need of repair (Scottish average 34%) while 38% of 'C' routes require extra cash (34% across Scotland). More than half of Scottish Borders unclassified roads (52%) need repairs, way above Scotland's mean figure of 38%.

All of this suggests that if spending on Borders roads has increased over the last five years then it's had little impact on our virulent pothole plague.

The annual spend by SBC on roads (per kilometre) has been distinctly underwhelming - £6,014 compared to the Scottish average figure of £9,667. 

So the 'new' Tory promises on cash for roads without any mention of values or costs should be taken with an extremely large pinch of salt.

To be fair the SNP offering is equally vague. The party's Jedburgh & District leaflet declares: "Improve our roads by increasing investment and using the technology we need to improve how we repair potholes, improve verges and manage flooding".

COMING NEXT: HOW HAS THE COUNCIL PERFORMED IN OTHER SPHERES?