Surrey County Council has responded to the Liberal Democrat campaign which calls on the County Council to invest in repairing footways across the county.

Project “Pavement Horizon” is a 6-year programme that will see over £20m invested in Surrey’s most heavily used pavements. This investment consists of funding £6m of works in this year (2016/17), and £3m in each of the subsequent years (2017/18 – 2021/2022). This is a significant increase from the £1.5m per year that was previously spent on pavements.

The programme will comprise:

• (1) Reconstruction schemes (which will make up approximately 60% of the total budget) targeted at pavements around schools, shopping areas, health centres, hospitals and village and town centres.
• (2) Reconditioning schemes (approximately 40% of the total budget, but only costing about 10% of the unit cost of reconstruction schemes), prioritised as for reconstruction schemes but also intended to ensure our entire network is kept in a reasonable condition.

The poor state of the pavement on the south side of Ashcombe Road between Station Road and The Ashcombe where children walking to school often have to walk in the road to avoid puddles of water and on the north side of Church Street between Station Road and Myrtle Road where elderly residents are unable to walk along the pavement as the camber is 1 in 8 (it should be no more than 1 in 30) are both scheduled for repair / remedial work in the current financial year.

The footpath along the A25 from Abinger Hammer through Wotton to Westcott is also on the provisional list for reconstruction during the remaining years of the project.