Two years of delivering better streets

Hounslow Highways, the highways service provider working on behalf of the London Borough of Hounslow, has been delivering better streets in the borough for two years.

Responsible for maintaining the roads, pavements and street lighting across the borough, as well as providing a number of other key services including street cleansing, winter maintenance and enforcement, since the contract started Hounslow Highways has been working hard to improve the appearance and quality of the streets.

In the first two years, Hounslow Highways has:

• Resurfaced 216km of roads – that’s almost two thirds of the length of the River Thames
• Refurbished 153km of pavements – that’s more than the length of Hadrian’s Wall
• Installed 13,000 new LED (light emitting diode) street lights
• Swept the equivalent of 22,000km of roads and pavements
• Issued 545 enforcement notices for highways and cleansing related offences
• Completed over 20,000 highways repairs
• Cleared 11,000 fly-tips
• Cleared almost 9,000 tonnes of leaves
• Received 60,000 enquiries
• Removed graffiti from 707 locations
• Jet-cleaned 635 gullies and drains
• Recruited 41 apprentices (five business management, two highways and 34 environmental services apprentices)
• Received 1,700 tweets on Twitter
• Recruited eight volunteer lay assessors
• Had over 100,000 visitors to the Hounslow Highways website
• Gritted 132km of roads
• Issued 1,162 fines for street work offences by utility companies and works promoters

Councillor Amrit Mann, Deputy Leader of Hounslow Council, said: “Without a doubt Hounslow’s roads have improved significantly over the last two years and I would like to congratulate Hounslow Highways for their hard work making this happen. It’s early days but I am optimistic that we will see more and better street management in years to come.”

Rob Gillespie, Hounslow Highways Service Director, said: “I am sure most people would agree that there have been some very real improvements across the borough in the last two years. There is still much work to do, but over the next three years as we continue the £100 million core investment period, there will be many more improvements.”

“We have done a lot of work to develop the street cleansing and enforcement parts of the contract which is delivering greater benefits. We really hope that 2015 brings further improvements and sees a reduction in cleansing and illegal waste problems as we continue to work with the council on their zero tolerance approach, whilst continuing our investment in the backbone of the borough.”