Highway Rangers

Dear Colleague

I am pleased to inform you that from April 2008 the Highway Rangers will be working in your area.

As part of the County Council's commitment to improving the street scene, the Highway Rangers service is being extended from the original trial to a countywide service. From April there will be 3 two-person teams, with one based at each Area Highways Office.

The role of the Highway Rangers is to act as "custodians" for the public highway, providing a highly visible service, carrying out a wide range of small-scale street scene improvement works.

The Rangers will be able to respond to locally identified issues, on the public highway, whether from residents or partner organisations. (From our experience with the trial, Parish Councils appear very well placed for collating information and ensuring the Rangers are best used in their area).

Each team will rotate between the County Local Committee areas within their section of the County, working in each approximately every 5 weeks. This frequency will be regularly monitored to ensure maximum benefit is achieved and could vary in response to the number of requests for work received.

The scope of their work is varied although it should be recognised that they are targeting small-scale street scene improvement works. Tasks might only take a few moments to complete (such as cleaning a dirty sign), or could take up to a full day (such as clearing some overgrown vegetation). There are some more examples identified below.

Outside of their scope are large-scale improvement schemes, or other works that would routinely be covered by the Area Highway Office.

Furthermore, the Highway Rangers will not be equipped to fill potholes or deal with other safety works requiring immediate attention.

Despite the small size of some of the tasks, we have found that the overall impact can really help to improve the street scene and make an area appear more "cared" for.

Cont.../..

19 February 2008

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The type of work that the Highway Rangers could undertake includes the following:

1. �� Some hedge and vegetation trimming.

 

2. �� Siding pavements and clearing unsightly weeds.

 

3. �� Sign cleansing.

 

4. �� Removing unlawful signs.

 

5. �� Simple road sign repairs and removal of sign clutter.

 

6. �� Hand clearing drainage grips and some ditches.

 

7. �� Clearing debris away from gully tops and small culverts.

 

8. �� Renovating WSCC street furniture.

 

With your help identifying local issues and making referrals to the service, we will be able to target this resource to maximise the benefit to local residents.

Cont.../..

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cont.../..

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At the moment we are in the process of finalising the reporting channels for their works and so I will be coming back to you again shortly to confirm this. However, I hope you will be able support us as we prepare for the roll out of this new service and take this opportunity to begin to collect details of tasks that could be suitable for the team once they are working in your area.

If you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact me, otherwise I shall be touch again shortly with some more information.

Yours sincerely

Street Scene Development Manager