Why summer roadworks matter more than you might think

By Councillor Liz Leffman, Cabinet Member for Highways Construction and Repairs

I am guessing that when you think about winter on our roads, you immediately think about potholes, flooding and icy conditions?

And that’s understandable – the challenges we faced last winter were extraordinary and we know that road users were extremely frustrated and rightly so.

That is why we have focused a huge amount of work over the spring, summer and autumn period on preventing those problems from happening again. It’s also why my role exists – to have oversight of the plans to ensure they translate to work on the ground.

Work over the warmer months is not something new, we do it annually, but this year has been scaled up to be one of our biggest programmes of preventative highway maintenance in recent times. It's part of a simple approach: fix problems before they develop, strengthen our road network and make the best use of public money.

This year alone, we've invested £8 million in surface dressing.

Our surface dressing programme has protected more than one million square metres of road across 87 roads in 62 towns and villages. Surface dressing might not be a term most people use every day, but it is one of the most effective and best value maintenance techniques available. By sealing the road surface and preventing water from getting in, it helps stop potholes forming and can extend the life of a road by eight to ten years.

We’ve also delivered a substantial resurfacing programme worth millions of pounds. This summer and autumn, work has been carried out on 35 roads covering more than 105,000 square metres of carriageway, including major routes like the A44 Worcester Road in Chipping Norton, A40 Milton Common, A361 Southam Road and Horsefair in Banbury, Thames Street in Oxford and Horspath Driftway.

These schemes are not just about creating smoother journeys for a few weeks after they’re finished. They stop water penetrating aging road surfaces, improve skid resistance and reduce the need for emergency repairs during the colder months ahead.

And of course, the work happening beneath our feet also makes a difference.

Following the very wet weather over the winter period, we made a commitment to improve the county's drainage network. In 2025 we invested £2.6 million in a countywide programme to clean highway drains, gullies, manholes and catchpits, supported by an additional £1.5 million investment in drainage improvements.

The scale of the work has been remarkable.

• We visited every highway gully in Oxfordshire - and inspected those we could access
• We cleaned 135,254 gullies (92% of gullies in the county)
• We removed around 2,346 tonnes of material from the network.

That gives us the most detailed understanding we've ever had of the condition of our drainage infrastructure. This reverses a decision to cut spending on gullies by the previous administration, who reduced gully clearance to once every four years

And we're not stopping there.

Earlier this year, the council approved a further £4 million investment to repair and replace damaged gullies and drainage infrastructure over the next two years. Combined with existing programmes, this takes our overall drainage investment to £9.42 million. The work will help reduce flooding, protect communities and improve the resilience of our roads during periods of severe weather.

Alongside these major programmes, we've also completed preventative work including 229,559 square metres of retexturing across 20 roads, reconstruction of approximately 30,000 square metres across five roads using in-situ recycling techniques, and improvements to footways at 66 locations.

And ahead of more resurfacing next summer, we’re also investing another £4.5m in pre-surface dressing patching for our roads this winter.

What all these projects have in common is that they're focused on getting ahead of problems rather than simply reacting to them.

Of course, winter will always test our road network.

Heavy rainfall, freezing temperatures and high traffic volumes inevitably create challenges. But thanks to the investment we've made over the past several months, Oxfordshire is entering the autumn and winter period in a far stronger position.

I'm incredibly proud of the work our highways teams and contractors have delivered. Every project contributes to the same goal: safer, more reliable journeys for residents.

So if you've passed roadworks this summer and wondered what's happening, there's a good chance you've been seeing winter preparation in action. If you spot something we need to know about, report it on Fix My Street.

Winter maintenance doesn't start when the first frost arrives. It starts months earlier while the weather is still on our side.