Road repairs costing £2.1m to tackle peat problems

A £2.1m project to rebuild, repair and tackle subsidence on roads built on peat soil is beginning.

Work will begin this week on a stretch of Forty Foot Bank in Ramsey, and Coates Road in Coates, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire County Council said.

Further work on Long Drove in Holme will begin later in the month.

The council said that about 40% of Cambridgeshire, including most of Fenland and large areas of both Huntingdonshire and East Cambridgeshire, was made up of peatland which "makes the area's roads particularly difficult and expensive to maintain".

Forty Foot Bank connects Ramsey Forty Foot village to Doddington and Chatteris and has seen a number of fatal crashes over the years.

More recently, the road has begun to subside, with large cracks and ridges appearing.

It has been referred to as a "death trap" by one resident.

The council said work to reconstruct 0.6 miles (1km) of that road would take about six weeks - and cost more than £550,000.

Work to resurface a similar length of Coates Road between The Fold and Minuet Gardens would take the same length of time, and cost about £500,000.

Reconstructing about a mile (1.8km) of Long Drove in Holme would cost about £1.1m and take about two weeks, it said.

The council said all three roads would be closed while the works were ongoing, with diversion routes put in place.

Councillor Alex Beckett, the Liberal Democrat chair of the council's highways and transport committee, said: "We allocated £56m in our last budget to continue the largest investment in Cambridgeshire's roads for a decade and we've been working hard to rebuild, resurface and repair some of the most badly affected peat soil-based roads in the county.

"Peat soil shifts and moves around with seasonal changes – much more than other land – so we face more expensive highway works cost and road maintenance bills compared to other places."

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