HIGHWAYS bosses have opened the door on a new control hub that is helping plan work on the county’s 2,000 miles of road.

New technology is now in place to enable the East Sussex County Council’s contractor – Balfour Beatty Living Places, to monitor activity, track work and find ways to improve the service.

Contract Director Nicola Blake said: “The Operational Control Hub is a vital tool that gives us oversight across the entire network. It offers us full visibility of our activities, helps us proactively resolve any challenges and ensures we keep traffic and people moving.

“It also helps us identify and resolve emergencies quickly to minimise disruption to the travelling public.”

Its introduction follows the county council’s decision to invest an additional £15.7 million to address increasing road damage caused by extreme weather.

The money is paying for more patching and surface dressing work to bring roads in poor condition up to a good standard and protect them for longer and drainage work to keep water off road surfaces.

Cllr Claire Dowling, the county council’s lead member for transport and environment said: “Like the rest of the country, our roads have suffered from the extreme weather we have experienced in recent years.  This additional investment is vital in improving our road network and reducing the need for roadworks by extending the life of road surfaces.

“The additional £15.7 million investment that we have agreed means we will spend almost £50 million on roads across East Sussex in 2023/24.

“The investment focuses on miles of road surface that is in a poor condition, as improving every road at once would require six times as much spending – money that is not available from our limited council budget which also has to fund services such as those supporting vulnerable adults and children.”

Extra investment has already been made in the county’s highways after this was set as an area of priority for the council.

In 2022-23 an additional £8.9 million was allocated which boosted the council’s patching programme. This led to an additional 730 sections of the road network being treated, funded 280 additional works to pavements, and repaired and maintained road markings, road signs and signposts across the county.

East Sussex Highways carries out regular checks on roads across East Sussex, but with more than 2,000 miles of highway to monitor, members of the public are encouraged to directly report defects.

Reports can be made online at www.eastsussexhighways.com where information about how East Sussex highways are managed and upcoming roadworks can also be found.