Dormice blamed for road delays

Twm Owen Local Democracy Reporter

Dormice have been blamed for continued delays to repair a carriageway on a main road linking Wales and the Midlands. 

Drivers have faced delays on the A40 from Monmouth towards Ross-on-Wye, and beyond, since February 2024 when rockfall closed the north bound carriageway at Ganarew, in Herefordshire, known as Leys Bend. 

A contraflow system has been in place which sees northbound drivers, leaving Wales, head along a lane on the southbound carriageway as work to restore the two northbound lanes continues. 

Delays in the construction project, which is the responsibility of the UK Government’s National Highways agency, have included assessment of the potential for further rockfalls and ecological precautions.

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"Dormice in the slippage"

Carl Touhig, Monmouthshire County Council’s senior officer for highways, cited Leys Bend as an example of how repairs and maintenance work can fall behind schedule when he briefed the council’s public services scrutiny committee on the management of the road network. 

“At Leys Bend that work was put on hold because of concerns there may be dormice in the slippage itself and that put at least six months on to the job,” said Mr Touhig: “It doesn’t take a lot. 

“I wouldn’t want to see dormice displaced either but it is a difficult thing for us when badgers, otters, dormice, bats and other species require special measures before we can go in and do work and adds a lot of time to our programmes.” 

The Welsh Government has made £120 million available in borrowing powers, for councils across Wales, to carry out road repairs this year. Mr Touhig said the council is aware some of the schemes it has applied for will be pushed back but will priorities using the funding, likely to be worth around £3.5m for Monmouthshire, that is in place for the coming year. 

Works that have to be pushed back will be funded from the council’s own capital funding budget.

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"Fragile market"

Mr Touhig also warned rising costs in the construction industry have created a “fragile market” and many contractors are “struggling” to complete projects within contracts they signed four or more years ago with costs having risen by 25 to 30 per cent since. 

He said Monmouthshire could struggle to attract contractors for some of its schemes. 

“There’s 22 local authorities all having a share of £120m and all going out to the same contractors at the same time. 

“The concern is Monmouthshire isn’t big enough and our projects aren’t big enough to attract the bigger contractors. We hope to do a lot internally using our own workforce but if I put all my workers on putting down new tarmac there won’t be anyone doing drainage and winter maintenance so we can’t do that.” 

Mr Touhig said the £120m will also have to cover all the other associated costs including design, tendering, traffic management and publicising it as well as ecology schemes. 

“£120 for new tarmac would go a long way but doesn’t go as far as you’d like to think,” said Mr Touhig.