A CASH boost of over a million pounds has resulted in a number of the county’s roads being resurfaced, some of which are in Ross.

Roads in the county’s market towns are being resurfaced thanks to additional investment of £1.75m. Each of the market towns has £350k allocated for road resurfacing work and other safety improvement schemes, which are set to take place over the coming months.

The schemes will include resurfacing, patching, safety barrier improvements, structural and drainage improvements, vegetation clearance, and white line repair.

Works have been completed in Ross-on-Wye with Purland, Springfield Road, Eastfield Road-Fernbank junction, Chapel Road-Tudor Street, Tudor Rise, Verschoyle Gardens and Roman Way all being resurfaced.

While the works in Ross-on-Wye were being undertaken, concerns were raised over the condition of the carriageway in some areas and additional work by Balfour Beatty was required to address these concerns.

This resulted in additional costs, meaning that some areas that had been due to be resurfaced could not be included.

Ross Town Council decided last May against expanding their resurfacing scheme, opting instead to keep it to their original plans.

At the town council’s annual general meeting, councillors decided that it would not be a good use of taxpayer money to expand on the scheme to resurface a number roads in the town.

The suggestion came up before the planning committee, who felt that the extension was costly and were unsure about where the money was going to come from. The extension was estimated to cost approximately £155,000 extra to the £300,000 already earmarked for the works. The current funds for the scheme have been taken from a larger £350,000 grant from the extraordinary market towns maintenance fund.

It was argued that that before taking money out of next year’s budget, other priorities—such as pedestrian crossings, public transport infrastructure—ought to be considered too.