STORM EOWYN may have handed Argyll and Bute Council a repair bill of over £7M for its roads and infrastructure, a
report has revealed.
Locations in all four administrative areas of the region were affected by the weather conditions, which were subject to a red warning, on Friday, January 24.
Three locations, at Arrochar, Dunoon and Ormsary, were identified as needing more extensive work to be carried out immediately on the weekend after the storm. The Arrochar repairs are listed as complete and within budget while the other two remain ongoing.
A lengthy list of storm- damaged sites, on land and sea, are listed by council officials in a report – and it is admitted that repairs to all of them may not be possible.
However,itisalsoexpected that the potential cost could reduce “significantly” as a range of repair options are considered.
The report will go before the council’s environment, development and infrastructure committee at its meeting on Thursday, March 20.
Executive director Kirsty Flanagan said: “Given the potentially high cost of these works and likelihood
that they would not receive funding through the Bellwin Scheme a process of prioritisation and options appraisal is currently being undertaken.
“The prioritisation and options appraisal exercise aims to rank the works in order of importance based on both the engineering assessment and the relative significance of each of the assets.
“The exercise will also provide repair options for each location that range from solutions that are fully engineered to modern standards incorporating a high level of future resilience through to more basic repairs methods that will provide a suitable repair while potentially not having the same level of future resilience.
“This approach is being taken in recognition that budgets are finite and those solutions that involve a
higher degree of engineering may simply be unaffordable.
“At the present time the cost estimates are believed to represent the higher limits of cost and it is expected that these costs will reduce significantly through the prioritisation and options appraisal process in order that an affordable programme of repairs can be implemented.”
Following a table listing all the storm-damaged sites, Ms Flanagan added: “The tables above demonstrate a cost of up to £7,320,000 to repair all damage resulting from Strom Eowyn to marine, road and coastal assets to a fully engineered standard.
“These costs are expected to reduce significantly as a range of repair options are considered for each location in order to develop a repair programme that is affordable within existing capital budgets.
“However, it is recognised
that until the process of option reviews is complete cost certainty will not be possible. There is also a risk that repairing all damaged assets to a desired level may simply not be possible within the finite resources available.
“While officers believe that the tables identify all roads and infrastructure assets damaged by Storm Eowyn, with such a large number and scale of assets there is a risk that further repair works are identified in the future through routing inspection activities.
“With the potential costs standing at such a high level, Strom Eowyn demonstrates very clearly the increasing financial impact of severe weather events, the increase in prevalence and severity of which, is linked by climate scientists to the effects of climate change and global warming.”
Andrew Galloway Local Democracy Reporter
