A pothole campaigner claims he has been banned by his local council from fixing roads himself.
Cyclist Neil Innes was stunned when he was told by Aberdeenshire Council roads bosses they had no plans to repair faults on the route for the Ride the North event he is organising in August.
When he offered to fix the roads using contractors, the council stepped in to ban him from doing the work.
Neil told the Record: “Aberdeenshire Council made it clear to me that they would be doing virtually nothing about the dangerous parts of the road and they have now made it clear I have no authority to make improvements myself.
“This causes me a lot of frustration, given that I have witnessed one cyclist crash, who needed major surgery, due to the state of the road in a previous event.”
He added: “The problem seems to be that complaints about roads are dealt with by engineers, who couldn’t care less about 1400 riders coming to the area, spending more than a million pounds.
“The council seems to think that fixing these roads won’t be worth the effort.”
He added: “The Scottish Government puts a massive priority on cycling and walking ahead of driving but there is so little money being spent on cycle lanes. It does seem to be all talk.”
Neil identified 13 potholes and road faults in Aberdeenshire and was given an indication that just one might be sorted. In correspondence, Aberdeenshire’s senior road engineer, Alistair Millar, confirmed no improvements would be made on most of the faults raised.
He wrote: “What may appear as a defect/hazard for you, may not score highly enough on our matrix to warrant prioritising that defect over other defects in the area and I therefore cannot guarantee any reinstatements/repairs will be carried out along your proposed route(s) prior to your event.
“As for sweeping the route, it is felt that, although the surfaces have various forms of detritus on them, it is no more than you would expect on any country road and, given our current resource issues, we would not intend sweeping the route prior to your event.”
He added: “I would therefore suggest that you make entrants aware, possibly as part of a health and safety briefing, that they can expect to encounter many different surfaces along the route including mud, loose stone chippings, ruts etc and that they should take the appropriate measures for the conditions of the road.”
Neil replied: “I have people coming from around the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and US. I’m really proud of Aberdeenshire but I cannot run an event where roads are in that condition.
“I suggest the matrix is probably not sophisticated enough to score economic impacts and jobs so I’ll have to hope a human scoring comes up with something different.”
The Ride the North takes place in Huntly, Keig, Insch, Kennethmont, Rhynie, Dufftown, Keith, Cabrach, Knock, Aberchirder and Rothiemay.
Aberdeenshire Council’s head of roads and infrastructure, Philip McKay, said: “In line with the code of practice, reactive road maintenance is undertaken following a risk-based approach.
“The defects on our network, including the route chosen by Mr Innes for the event, have been assessed and prioritised to reflect the risks posed to road users. This evaluation takes account of the physical characteristic of the defect and the nature of the traffic on the road.”
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