West Sussex County Council’s highways team called out to almost 8,000 emergency issues in past two years

Seven of them – flooding at Shripney, Pagham and Bognor Regis, embankment failures at Duncton, Pulborough and Wiston Bends, and the Angel Inn fire at Midhurst – were classed as major highway incidents.

The figures were shared during a scrutiny committee meeting where members were asked to consider whether the council’s approach to major incidents was still appropriate given that extreme weather was forecast to increase in the coming years.

The committee made a number of suggestions including the need for a steering group to be set up whenever a major incident took place.

Such a group would include councillors local to the incident.

Another suggestion was that a contingency budget should be created specifically to help pay for the fallout from major incidents.

The idea was put forward by Nigel Jupp (Con, Southwater & Nuthurst), who estimated that the seven major incidents had put a £2m dent in the highways budget.

Mr Jupp also spoke about the embankment failure in December 2022 which caused a landslide and blocked the A29 at Pulborough.

The fall-out from that incident is still being dealt with and is being looked into by the council’s legal team.

Joy Dennis, cabinet member for highways & transport, acknowledged that the concrete blocks currently in place ‘don’t look particularly sightly’ but added that the road was running ‘very satisfactorily’.

She said: “Looking back on it, we had hoped for a resolution much more quickly. It didn’t happen and we kept hoping – and I think we hoped for too long.

“I think we should have put in, potentially, the one-way system a little quicker.

“But we were trying to do the right thing. People say we’re too risk-averse but on the other hand they’ll also say that we’re too heavy handed.”

Regarding the final cost of the incident, she said: “We don’t know what the solution will be or how how that solution will be obtained or undertaken and whose responsibility it will be.”

The meeting was told that 75,000 inquiries had been made to the highways team in the past year – that number was usually around 50,000 to 55,000.

Mrs Dennis said the teams had been ‘overwhelmed’ and that morale had been low.

The situation was certainly not helped by the abuse which has been faced by staff while trying to do their work on the county’s roads.

She added that one had recently received a mouthful of abuse from a member of the public while he was speaking to a Southern Water team about removing their traffic management equipment – eg temporary traffic lights.

Officers said the aim was to spend part of the 2024/25 budget on staff and resources.

While the majority of private landowners are happy to co-operate with the council, especially in an emergency, it was pointed out that the authority’s powers to work on someone’s land were somewhat limited.

The meeting was told that the council was currently speaking to the Department for Transport about one issue.

But a balance had to be struck between flexibility and having ‘extreme powers’ to go where it pleased.