Dear Editor, I thought your readers may be interested in the, very nice, reply I got from Sheffield Council Street force in response to my query about a problem with the state of Manchester road in Stocksbridge. It may be old news to some but it gives a good update. 'Dear Mr Mell Thank you for your email dated 13 September 2011 regarding the above. Manchester Road is inspected on a regular basis and repairs undertaken to defects that exceed safety intervention levels, currently defined as a trip or pot hole with a vertical trip height of 20mm or more, in locations which could be considered to be potentially hazardous. An additional inspection, carried out in response to your enquiry, has been undertaken and some localised repairs are to be carried out. These repairs will be carried out within the next four weeks. The City Council appreciates the importance of well maintained roads and recognises the need to deliver improvements. However, the funding currently available for highway maintenance in the city is insufficient to improve the condition as quickly as we would like. With this in mind, the City Council has made a successful bid to Government for Private Finance Initiative Credits. This has secured £674m as part of the funding for a 25 year Highways Maintenance contract. Work is progressing to procure the contract with a planned commencement date of April 2012 with the road network being brought up to an appropriate standard within the following 7 years. This contract will cover all aspects of highway maintenance, not just carriageway and footway surfacing. In the meantime, all adopted roads will continue to be regularly inspected and any defects that exceed safety intervention levels will be suitably repaired. Roads found to be suffering from major deterioration will continue to be assessed in accordance with the criteria set out in the Street Maintenance Policy Standards and Strategy Statement and then considered for inclusion in the annual resurfacing programme. These systems ensure that the currently available resources are used in the most effective way possible. I am sorry I cannot provide a complete solution to the issues you have raised at present but hope you find the information about the proposed Highway Private Finance Initiative helpful. Kind regards Nick Hetherington Head of Streetscene Street Force '