Cllr Claire Sully, Monthly Somerset Councillor Report, March 2026

Details

Published: 10 March 2026

Plan in place to smarten Somerset’s roads, pavements and cycleways

Somerset Council to spend up to £5m over 3 years to smarten roads, pavements and cycleways — more drain and gully clearance, improved signs and road markings, litter collection and vegetation clearance near walking/cycling routes.

Current road maintenance programmes focus on safety critical works which can mean lower priority issues like faded road markings, broken signs and overgrown hedges have been left.

Improvements will also be made to the council’s public reporting system, to make it even easier for residents to highlight any issues on the roads.

Cllr Bill Revans, Leader of Somerset Council, said: "we know the public want us to do much more than simply keep our roads safe, and we want to see improvements across our council area.

We will continue to prioritise pothole repairs and are working hard to clear the backlog caused by the many weeks of wet weather and flooding we have experienced this winter. We plan to allocate additional funds to tackle the backlog of potholes if we need to."

Since January the council has received 16,332 defect reports (4,417 in the same period last year). As of 20 Feb, 35 teams have fixed 4,577 potholes. Repairs are prioritised by severity and will be completed within 2 hours, 24 hours, 7 days or 28 days depending on the category.

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