It's not just roads that don't get repaired

It's paths too.

It came out today that West Sussex County Council has over £19M worth of outstanding repairs to make on pathways across the county.

Every part of the county is suffering from this, but Crawley has been left with the worst of the backlog - well over a quarter of the work (by monetary value) - £5.6M.

I suppose that rural areas have fewer paths by the side of the roads, but I'm sure that Horsham can't be too far off having the same amount as Crawley, given that the district includes the town itself as well as some large villages. Mid Sussex has a few towns (East Grinstead, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill) and must also have a similar number of paths. Surely between the two districts there would be as much, if not work to do on paths. And yet the backlog for both combined comes to about £4.2M, still a fair amount less than Crawley.

When I was a councillor, I was always getting complaints about poor footpaths and roads. And whenever I passed them on to the County Council I would get the same reply, pretty much - that there was a programme of repairs and upgrades, but that particular road/path was not going to be dealt with soon.

Things have changed since then - WSCC has lost £6M on Fastway, has cut it's Highways budget and has grown a sizeable long term debt. Under such circumstances it's easy to see why they have got so far behind. What isn't so easy to see is why Crawley appears to have borne the brunt of postponed work.

Hat tip to the Crawley Observer