Unadopted roads are those roads which, for whatever reason, councils haven’t taken on responsibility for maintaining (“adopted roads”).
This is usually because they’re very minor roads, shared drives or access lanes. A more recent problem is developers leaving roads on new-build estates in such a poor condition that they don’t meet the required standard to be adopted by councils.
It’s a national issue and ended up being one of the most popular topics on Senedd Home in terms of views.
Cllr. Tim Thomas (Propel, Ynysawdre) asked about Bridgend Council’s strategy on long-term unadopted roads.
He wasn’t surprised that the proportion of unadopted roads was a low share of the overall network, but there were several issues in the Valleys Gateway (Sarn, Tondu, Bryncethin) and Pencoed areas where some roads have been “unadopted for decades”.
Cabinet Member for Communities, Cllr. Stuart Baldwin (Lab, Morfa), was aware of issues with unadopted roads and it’s an issue raised fairly regularly with BCBC by other elected representatives at all levels.
Ultimately, it was the responsibility of developers to bring roads up to the required standard as the last thing the council wants is to take over a road that’s a potential liability.
A Welsh Government unadopted roads fund has been used to bring a street in Porthcawl up to adoptable standard. However, that fund won’t cover the cost of fixing every single unadopted road in the county.
There are some streets and side lanes that were never intended to be brought up to an adoptable standard. Cllr. Baldwin cited an example of a broken street light, where he was told the road it was on was never intended to be adopted by the council as it’s a shared drive.
Corporate Director for Communities, Janine Nightingale, reiterated that “a very small number” of roads are unadopted and quite a lot of them are rear lanes and shared access lanes – they’re usually not main roads.
Further applications will be made to the Welsh Government fund – particularly for residential streets (so presumably not including access lanes and shared drives) – but there were still instances where housing developers were leaving roads in an unadoptable standard.
