Resurfacing Programme 2025 to 2026

The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods has approved a list of roads, with specific locations identified, to be resurfaced during the 2025 to 2026 financial year. These having been identified as priorities for treatment through the regular inspections. As part of our monitoring throughout the year, and especially following the Autumn and Winter months where more defects / potholes occur, the list is reviewed and adjustments made if there are changes to priorities.

To carry out these works safely and efficiently, it will usually be necessary to temporarily close the affected sections of each road to vehicular traffic. These closures require advance approval through the Street Works permit system, which helps coordinate activities and minimise disruption by avoiding clashes with other planned works in the same area.

To protect the newly resurfaced roads from being disturbed soon after completion, the Council applies an allowed two-year protection period. During this time, any non urgent works by utility companies requiring excavations are prevented. However, emergency works or new connections to essential services like gas, water, or electricity cannot be prevented.

In order to give utility companies (such as SGN, Thames Water, BT and others) time to assess whether they need to carry out any non emergency works in these roads beforehand, the Council must allow at least three-months’ notice period before resurfacing begins. This requirement makes it more difficult to schedule the works precisely, as utility companies may request to complete their work first. Therefore, it is not uncommon for Bexley to postpone resurfacing works to allow utility companies to carry out their planned works, so that these essential services for residents and businesses such as water, gas, electricity, and telecommunications are maintained and that it minimises the times that our new road surface is dug up soon after it is installed.

If all the above resurfacing works are able to be completed, that will be around 8.6 km / 5.3 miles of carriageway, and around 1 km / 0.6 miles of footway, replaced.

Additional Highway Maintenance Works in 2025 to 2026

Alongside the planned resurfacing schemes, we anticipate carrying out approximately 40 to 50 large patching schemes. These are targeted repairs where full resurfacing is not required, but where we have identified areas with multiple surface defects of different sizes and types.

In the meantime, we will continue to undertake urgent repairs in these areas where defects meet our emergency intervention criteria. These repairs may be temporary in nature, to ensure safety while avoiding unnecessary costs, and if necessary, more permanent repairs are planned shortly after.

The exact number of pothole repairs we will need to carry out cannot be predicted, as this depends on how many defects actually develop and meet our policy thresholds for action.

Find out about our intervention criteria

Typically, the number of defects increases during the autumn and winter months, due to the rain/snow freeze thaw effect.

Based on previous years, we expect to complete approximately:

• 1,600 urgent (P1) pothole repairs over the year (averaging around 5 repairs identified, instructed, and repaired per day)
• Around 400 non-urgent (P2) small pothole repairs

In addition, we plan to carry out a significant number of footway repairs, including the replacement of broken paving slabs, resurfacing cracked or lifted areas (often caused by tree roots), and fixing damage from vehicles driving illegally on the footways.

Damage to other highway infrastructure, such as safety railings, signposts, traffic signs, bollards and streetlights (often caused by poor or dangerous driving) are also dealt with. We repair or replace these, as necessary, to ensure the network remains safe and fully functional.

Other than road drainage gullies, the council has very limited equipment and service covers in the carriageways and footways, these mainly belong to one of the utility companies to access their cables or pipes. It is down to the owner of the equipment to keep these items in a good state of repair, including the surfacing material around them. The council notifies the correct utility of any issues and seeks to chase them to carry out repairs, however, it does not have control over when or how they do so.