DESCRIBED as ‘Mr Pothole’ by the chair of the Camelford Community Network Panel, Oliver Jones from CORMAC attended the panel’s most recent meeting on Wednesday, March 21 to update the community on road repairs in the area, writes Rosie Cripps.
Mr Jones told the meeting that his role at Cornwall Council involves looking after 64 parishes, five towns and dealing with 17 Cornwall Councillors, and answering any queries, comments and complaints put to his team in regards to Cornwall’s roads. As a rough guidance as to how often his team are contacted, Mr Jones said they receive 2,500 emails per month, plus a number of phone calls.
The team’s main aims are to manage expectations, correspondence and, of course, potholes.
CORMAC has recently introduced a new online service that allows people in Cornwall to pull up a map of their area and see if a pothole has been reported in their community. If it hasn’t been reported, the online user can click on the area where the pothole is located and they will be given a unique reference number. After reporting the pothole, safety inspectors will be informed and will go out to the area to validate if it is a defect or not. The person who has logged the pothole will receive feedback and will be sent an email or text when the repair has been carried out. Mr Jones added: “We’re delivering this as efficiently as we can.”
Cllr Andy Shaw, a Camelford town councillor, said: “Thanks for doing High Street, however, I talked about the state of the kerb and the pavement in that area — why didn’t this rectify when the workers were there? Now they’ve got to come out again.”
Mr Jones said in response: “We try and consolidate everything. It could well be that there is a defect with the pavement, but it might not be a category one defect level. I’m happy to look at this and feedback to you.”
A couple of gentlemen from Delabole had also turned out for the meeting. One claimed that the potholes in the village are not being ‘filled in properly’, and that chunks of the laid material are already starting to crumble and fall away from the repair.
Mr Jones said: “Obviously if this something that keeps reoccurring, it’s something we can look into.
“The velocity, amount of water and cold weather we’ve been having recently means some repairs have been failing.”
The subject of using recycled plastics as an alternative for filling in potholes was brought to the attention of Mr Jones by Cllr Rob Rotchell, Cornwall Councillor for Camelford. He said: “Firstly I’d like to commend CORMAC on their efforts during the recent bad weather.
“Using recycled plastics has been used by some authorities and using that to fill potholes as opposed to the traditional stuff has shown that it takes the same amount of time to use, it has the same grip, if not better, on the roads and is significantly cheaper. If it’s significantly cheaper, is this something you would look at using?”
Mr Jones said: “We always try to trial new products, and we’re always looking at the cost of repairing potholes. If there are new products on the market, we do get them down and look at the most cost effective repairs.”
Cllr Rotchell added: “I do think it would make the Cornish pound stretch a little bit further.”
As questions ceased, a member of the public wanted to commend Mr Jones and his team for their efforts. He said: “I live in Boscastle, and there’s no doubt that things have dramatically improved in terms of communication and carrying out the work. I’m here to say, I think you’re doing a better job.”