A new technique that allows highway workers to fix potholes in just one visit will soon be considered by Herts County Councillors following a trial.

For two weeks, from June 23 to July 4, urgent potholes in the trial area – made up of Abbotts Langley, Leavesden & Garston (Stanborough Woodside) and part of North Watford (Meriden Tudor) – were fixed using the Roadmender process.

A mastic asphalt material is heated in a boiler on site and then poured over the area of the road that needs repair. The trial selected residential areas in the southwest of the county, chosen for their suitability, with 65 repairs carried out on 22 sites over the trial.

A report prepared by Chris Allen-Smith, from the council's asset management team, said the method is not suitable for every road defect but "can fill most potholes, bind together an old, cracked surface and fill smaller dips and depressions to leave a sound, even surface".

It added: "The result looks neat and provides a solid, durable repair. The plant and equipment used is small and manoeuvrable, making it ideal for small-to-medium-sized repairs in urban areas. The main drawback is that it is relatively slow and can be expensive in large areas and/or deep repairs."

Addressing the council's highways cabinet panel, Mr Allen-Smith said: "We have an intervention level, we're we'll go and fix potholes that meet that intervention level. That's a standard approach across the industry in the UK.

"The intervention levels vary from authority to authority, but they're all generally in the same ballpark, so we will fix the ones that we consider to be a hazard, but we won't necessarily fix the not immediately hazardous defects that might be slightly adjacent to them.

"We appreciate that causes frustration to residents, so this was a trial of one alternative approach, and it's a fact-finding mission. It's been a sort of attempt to bottom out one approach. Great, if it works, and if it doesn't work, the jury is still out, but we may try other approaches."

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Responding to the report, Cllr Matt Cowley said: "I think without the details of the cost and the assessment of the success yet, we can't really take too much from this, but it seems like a productive exercise from what we've been told.

"I will look forward to seeing the full report with all the nitty-gritty on how we can roll this out, or indeed, not roll this out."

Cllr Alistair Willoughby said: "Two weeks sounds like a very short time for a trial, and particularly because we didn't tackle A-roads because of the various other potential traffic management costs. That is something we need to take into consideration.

"I do think there is a bit of an issue there – that in the two weeks, we were not doing some of the busiest roads, the ones that are affected the most, the ones that people often see the most."

Chair of the committee, Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst said: "[This] type of machinery can only take so much, it has to be heated up and then moved on, and obviously doing it in a constrained area reduced the amount of travel time between individual sites, so that actually was quite effective.

"The constraining factors we do have…you try and do your main road, potentially you need a temporary traffic regulation order, you need a lane closure, you'll need to very quickly refresh the white lines or the yellow lines, particularly if it's a principal road network, so there are some constraining factors.

"Once this has been assessed in terms of the cost and effectiveness, and whether this can be rolled out further or indeed, and other colleagues have suggested… we do a trial in a different part of the county using the same techniques, or we use something different again."

Councillors noted the report.

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