The ongoing crisis in the Gulf creating increased fuel and material costs for contractors and suppliers, means that the Council must make contingency plans to meet any additional expenditure for its annual roads’ reconstruction programme.
Thursday’s Environment, Development and Infrastructure Committee (18 June) agreed that the remaining £900,000 unallocated funds be retained as contingency funding for existing schemes in the current year’s programme.
At the end of the year, any remaining funding will be carried forward into the 2027/2028 roads reconstruction programme.
The £12 million available for the roads’ programme is the largest budget for many years and focuses on providing an overall improvement in road conditions across the network.
Some of the pre-surface dressing preparation work has already been completed, in Mid Argyll, Kintyre , and Mull, some overlay surfacing work on Bute is also already complete, and the rest of the work is scheduled to take place over the summer months when the weather is favourable for this type of construction.
A £1million programme of road surfacing and drainage work has started on Islay and Jura, and officers are working on the logistics of hiring a barge to ensure the materials reach the islands at the optimum time to complete the work.
Councillor John Armour, Policy Lead for Roads, Transport and Amenity Services, said: “We find ourselves in a disappointing situation. Our plan was to ask local elected members what schemes their communities would like progressed using the unallocated £900,000. Now we face something like a 10% increase in costs because of the Gulf crisis.
“However, we continue to move forward with our planned programme. Work is progressing and we ask our communities for patience while our workers and contractors are carrying out the improvements on our network.”
Full roads’ programme details on our website.
