Pam and I are looking closely at a number of areas in Cheadle & Gatley that need a bit more than just the odd patch or two.

As always, money’s the main issue.  There are two or three places we can get money from, but they’re all limited.

For example, there’s an area of worn tarmac on Old Hall Road (near the junction with Pendlebury Road, just north of the grass triangle).   Patching up the individual potholes won’t do much good – the patches will wear away in no time.  It needs to be properly resurfaced.

Resurfacing that section of road (maybe 20 yards long) will cost about £11,000.  That money could come from the Council’s central budget – which has to cover the whole borough – or it could come from our local ward funds that the councillors control (as local councillors, we have no say over the central budget – we can ask, but we can’t force anything to happen).

Taking it from local funds is quite possible, but we only get £21,000 a year for the whole ward for road repairs, so that’s over half the annual budget gone. (Just fixing normal potholes always comes from the central budget, it’s the bigger works that are the issue).

These are the sorts of decisions we  have to sort out and Pam in particular is working hard on them at the moment.

The areas we’re looking at include that section of Old Hall Road, the pavement on Brooklyn Crescent and the section of road at the junction of Beech Avenue and Burnside Road.

None of these will be fixed before the Autumn, and I can’t promise anything for sure, but I’m hopeful we can get something sorted with at least two of those three – and hopefully some more besides – over the next few months.