Drive with care as road works season ramps up

Drivers are being urged to allow extra time for journeys and drive with care as Orkney Islands Council’s Roads team gears up for the summer road works season – including the annual surface dressing programme.

The Roads team is already out and about doing preparatory work in several areas of the county ahead of surface dressing starting in late June - including road sweeping, surveys, patching and setting up signage and traffic management.

The warmer summer months typically sees an extensive surface dressing programme take place around the county, where selected roads are ‘dressed’ with a protective layer of polymer binder and chips to help prolong the life of carriageways.

The 2024 programme will start around 20 June and finish in early August, and will see 14 stretches of road totalling around 24kms being surface dressed, across eight different areas - Birsay, Sandwick, Harray, Orphir, Kirkwall, South Ronaldsay, St Andrews and Stromness.

The list of roads included in this year’s programme can be found at: www.orkney.gov.uk/roads

Surface dressing seals the road surface, preventing further deterioration and stopping water from penetrating the deeper road structure, which can then lead to potholes forming. At around £3.90 per square metre it is an effective and efficient way to reduce the need for more costly repairs such as resurfacing (where the road is scraped out and rebuilt from the foundations).

Lorna Richardson is Head of the Council’s Neighbourhood Services: “We surface dress in summer as the warmer temperatures helps the materials cure quicker, meaning we can move through the work and reopen roads in optimum time.

“We’d ask drivers to be mindful our team are out and about more over coming weeks, and could well be on the roads in early mornings to set up and possibly sometimes later than 5pm - so please be prepared to encounter crews on the road right throughout the summer roadworks season.”

Once underway, folks can follow the Council’s social media for updates on surface dressing operations:

Telegram: t.me/OIC_Roads
Facebook: www.facebook.com/oicupdates
X (formerly Twitter): www.x.com/oic_roads
Our website: www.orkney.gov.uk (check the social media panel or Latest News tab)

Image: Pictured here is surface dressing underway.

Find out more about how we keep Orkney's roads maintained, in our behind-the-scenes look, here.