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First published on Thursday 29 May 2003:
by Heather Robson
The shoddy state of footpaths on a Redruth estate could cost the taxpayer thousands, two county councillors claim.
Councillors Graeme Hicks and Mark Kaczmarek say the state of footpaths on Redruth's Paddock Estate, which straddles the boundary between their wards - Redruth South and Lanner - is down to officers who should have ensured developers followed rules laid out in the "Cornwall Design Guide."
On the Redruth South side of the estate, where the footpaths are the responsibility of the developer but will eventually be adopted by the highways department, grass has begun to grow up through the tarmac.
This has been addressed by "patchworking" which has created an eyesore as the grass has merely started to grow through the "patches", the councillors say.
On the Lanner side, the tarmac has started to crack up.
"Someone in the county council has to accept full responsibility for this fiasco and must be held to account for this disgraceful situation," said Mr Hicks.
"The section in the Redruth parish has not yet been adopted and has the appearance of a patchwork quilt. This in my opinion is unacceptable and I want the footways ripped up and resurfaced in this section to ensure that no future liability is put onto the ratepayer."
Mr Hicks said a recent internal audit showed the quality of inspection to be "suspect".
"One of the findings by the recent internal audit into development control was that quality of inspection by council officers was suspect. The state of these footways in the Lanner district part of the Paddock suggests that they were of a substandard construction. They were only adopted five years ago. The footways have recently had core samples taken by the county council and results suggest that there is some fault in the sub base."
Councillors Hicks and Kaczmarek believe the situation at the Paddock could be only the tip of the iceberg.
"There could be many other examples of this problem throughout the county and the cost to the hard-pushed taxpayer could be huge."
A spokesman for Cornwall county council said: "County councillors have reported a number of sites where minor defects have occurred with roads and footpaths in the first few years after adoption.
"We will shortly be undertaking visual surveys on roads adopted over the last five to ten years, as part of our ongoing monitoring process.
This will help us to determine the extent of these problems throughout the county. Any defects that are a hazard to users on these roads will be rectified in the same way as any other road defect to ensure that users and property owners are not at risk."
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