Dear Councillor Worthington,

Thank you for your enquiry on this subject, we are happy to help answer your questions.

The challenges in maintaining the road network are numerous and complex, so although we have answered your queries in depth below, it probably would be useful for you (and potentially your fellow Councillors) to have some form of onsite briefing.

The Director of Facilities & Operations has offered that if you and your fellow Councillors feel it would be beneficial, he would be prepared to host a field trip so you can see the issues first hand and have a more detailed briefing. Perhaps this could be via one of the Public Works Committee’s informal meetings?

General state of the road network and representations by fellow Councillors at JMC
It has been known for some years that the island’s roads need major refurbishment.

Many of the roads were originally constructed in more arid times, meaning they were built without proper thickness layers, drainage or even a camber. This means the advent of more frequent storms (brought about by climate change) are causing an ever greater degree of damage each year.

As an example, the picture below of the NASA Road last year, shows the wafer thin top layer of the road surface and virtually none of the normal sub layers you would expect to see with a road.

Such is the scale of the damage being caused to Ascension’s fragile road infrastructure, that your colleagues Cllr. Nicholls and Cllr. Kerry Benjamin, were kind enough the raise this issue as a concern at the recent Joint Ministerial Council. The entry recorded was, “Ascension is experiencing more frequent tropical storms and increased and often heavy rainfall. Much of the road network and island infrastructure has no drainage system. Damage to roads and accommodation is more frequent, with already stretched resources diverted from other priorities. Landslides on key roads are increasingly common”.

What would it cost to properly renew Ascension’s ring road
The challenge is that to resurface the ring road to the standard of the area you identified (the Georgetown/ Airhead Road done by the runway contractors) would cost approximately £10,000,000, not including the NASA Road or Green Mountain Road.

Even if we only resurfaced a small part of the ring road to that standard, the likely cost would still be several millions of pounds

The reason for this is that the establishment costs in getting the required specialist equipment and thousands of tonnes of materials to the island, would be substantial. This is because the arrangements regarding use of the FIRS, mean AIG would have to meet the entire shipping cost.

We have looked at whether some of the materials could be taken from appropriate areas of the island, but this process in itself would require importing expensive equipment needed for that process.

History of the latest repairs to the Georgetown/Airhead Road and why more of the ring road was not resurfaced at the same time
The Georgetown to the Airhead road was replaced by the runway contractor as part of their contractual obligations under the runway contract.

AIG did try extensively at the time to see if an add on arrangement could be made, so the same contractor could address the rest of the ring road.

Despite the willingness of all parties (including our military partners on island) this was not possible due to issues with materials and the runway contractor’s contractual obligations.

What is being done about the ring road generally
Obviously, an investment of around £10,000,000 is substantially beyond AIG’s means, so we have been pursuing strategies that may assist us in delivering major improvement to some parts of the road network at a cost AIG can afford.

Initially, we did as you suggest, and contacted a contractor used by our colleagues at the airhead, however, their quote for a survey and suggested specification etc was unaffordable for AIG.

Since then however, the Project Manager has identified a more cost effective way to obtain such a survey etc and FCDO have kindly agreed to fund this survey (to a level you will understand I cannot disclose here).

The road survey envisaged will identify which parts of the road network are most in need and what the cost might be to address those sections in isolation. This will include cost projections and design recommendations. The tender invites for this work are already out, with parties being asked to express interest by 13 December 2024. The deadline for receiving Tenders is 17 January 2025.

In the interim we have been looking at other potential solutions to improve the situation, however to date these interim solutions have been found to either be not appropriate, or to be very expensive. To give two examples;

1. Previously, we looked at whether a slurry based solution being used in St Helena would work here, but it will not.

2. We are currently looking into the possible viability of a Micro-asphalt surface treatment vehicle (which has seen some recent success in the UK) as a solution, but even if this does prove to be something we would want, the cost would be £500,000 plus shipping.

AIG have also asked MOD colleagues if AIG can be made aware of any similar projects taking place in the Falklands, as this would open up the possibility of a contractor stopping off at Ascension. If this occurred, it could mean potentially lower contract costs on both Ascension and the Falklands (due to economies of scale).

Until any of these ideas prove to be successful, we are limited in what we can do and will likely have to continue the pattern of frequent repair and pothole filling.

Road Maintenance Team
On the subject of road maintenance generally, it is worth noting that Ascension does not have a specific roads maintenance team.

The work you see being done by AIG Team members on the roads, is carried out by the Plant team as part of their wider role.

The Plant team is an effective, busy and dedicated team who face a consistently very high level of work, despite being a relatively small group (seven people maximum, although obviously leave etc usually means their actual number is smaller).

To give you an idea of the work load this team faces, in November their work included:

• Ship work for seven days (including over the bank holiday).
• Working on the two Waste Water Plants that will serve Georgetown and Two Boats
• Flood defence work in Two Boats including significant road works
• Maintaining the existing waste water plants.
• Supplying effluent water for use on gardens.
• Filling potholes
• Assisting partner organisations with their work (Babcock for example)
• Mexican thorn clearance.
• Operating the Road Sweeper.
• Preparing the football pitch.

It is also this team who repair the Marty Wade track – a now mammoth annual undertaking in itself due to the location.

An example of how Road maintenance can be impacted by other tasks - Football pitch
The plant team do most of the work on pitch preparation with assistance from colleagues in other departments for tasks like pitch markings. Whilst this may seem like a routine task, it does draw team members away from work like road repairs

For some months we struggled to be able to prepare the pitch due to other work demands but as the organisers strongly emphasised a tournament was imminent, we diverted resources to finish the pitch.

Having completed this pitch work last week, although one game was played on Sunday, we now understand from social media posts that the tournament envisaged will not take place until February. Had the organisers communicated this tournament delay of two months to us, there would have been a case for considering postponing the pitch work until January in favour of working on NASA Road in late November/early December.

NASA Road strategy
The current status of the NASA Road is that it remains as being open for vehicles (but in need of final repairs).

On NASA Road, the strategy was to reopen the road as a priority and then return at a later date to complete the works. This is because the NASA Road ranks below the ring road as it is not used for any strategic purpose and apart from leisure use, is used by Conservation and Sea & Land Rescue who both have all-terrain vehicle capability.

This means that currently repair of the Marty Wade track ranks higher than finishing the NASA Road repairs as Marty Wade remains impassable to the official vehicles that need to use it. Conservation and Sea & Land Rescue both have a need to reach the areas at the base of Marty Wade track.

However the repairs to Marty Wade have already restarted and work on North East Bay Road as well as NASA Road will recommence this month. We are hopeful that NASA Road will be fully repaired during January.

Previous complaints about the NASA Road and future sweeping use data
Whilst no one disputes that the state of the NASA Road is not ideal, yours is only the second ‘complaint’ recorded on the matter (with the only other one being in the previous week).

We checked the Helpdesk records back to July and there have been no customer complaints raised with the AIG helpdesk about the NASA Road. The Director of Facilities & Operations did have a person approach him informally at the Airhead on Monday 25 November about sweeping the road. Subsequently he did pass the message on and the team were in the process of programming the work in when your CEF was submitted.

Also having checked the most recent minutes of the public works committee (18 October) there appears to have been no concerns raised at that meeting.

Road sweeper
The Plant team confirm the road sweeper is being used at least twice a week (although obviously not to that extent on weeks with ship work or a bank holiday) and we hope to increase that to four times a week in February.

Also when asked, we do adjust the sweeping programme to solve problem areas. Two examples of this are:

• The person who made the comments at the Airhead on 25 November. This enquiry resulted in the NASA Road being prioritised for the Sweeper.
• More recently, we had a request regarding a different stretch of road, and that too resulted in the sweeper route being reprioritised.

Clinker
Your question about preventing clinker being present on the road is a difficult one, as unless there is an adverse weather event, most clinker on the ring road is present because of vehicles (and possibly sometimes animals) introducing it in some way. Clearing or coating clinker for a distance around the ring road would clearly help, but this would likely be a very expensive solution that would still not fully solve the issue on an island where so much of the material is present.

Your query about sweeping lose materials off repair areas is slightly more complex and one best explained if you get the chance to do the field trip we are offering.

However in general, whilst acknowledging that sometimes we could be more prompt at doing this, in many cases we cannot sweep for a period of time after a repair (as to do so might disrupt the main repair itself and/or the compaction process). Frequently we find the curing time for materials is a challenge in our environment.

Use of the Helpdesk
We encourage the use of the Helpdesk for all fault or work requests (including sweeping and road repair requests). Using the Helpdesk means:

• There are records of how often an area is flagged as a concern.
• The response is quicker, as a CEF inevitably takes longer to travel through the system etc.

The AIG Help Desk can be contacted via 66116 or help.desk@ascension.gov.ac.

Looking to the future and potential ways forward
We will continue to maintain the road network as best we can with the resources available whilst we await developments on the other ideas above.

However if it is the wish of you and your fellow Councillors, we can look at potentially adjusting priorities to enable us to deal with the roads more effectively, until a long term solution can be found. Potential options could include:

 Creating a Roads team who would be free to address road repairs in a more focused way (but obviously this would mean significant cost).

 Considering whether you wish the Plant team to drop tasks that may be more appropriate for the community to embrace.

We hope this helps explain the situation to date and as mentioned above we would be very happy to host a field trip to help give more context the points above.

NB AIG is not responsible for road maintenance inside the base/airhead areas.

Councillor Worthington and Councillor Kyla Benjamin

Submitted: 4 December 2024

Response: 6 January 2025