DORSET Council is expected to keep its staffing arrangements unchanged for its highway construction teams.

The director who heads the section claims that to do anything else could either leave it short of workers at key times – or cost more.

The council has a contract to buy in additional staff when it needs to, including clearing snow and ice in bad weather and for maintaining its roads throughout the year where demand can be unpredictable. Specialist staff are also bought in to operate plant and equipment and to control traffic where works are taking place.

Cabinet members are being asked to agree to continue with the same ‘top up’ system when they meet next Wednesday (Sept 3rd) when the existing contract ends in March 2020.

Based on past expenditure the estimated total cost is expected to be around £6 million over a four-year period.

A report by corporate development director Aidan Dunn says that not to continue the existing arrangements would “put the service under extreme pressures to deliver the vital and critical highway functions quickly and efficiently, including road maintenance and winter maintenance, carriageway defect repairs and safety improvement schemes.”

He says that by continuing to use local suppliers travel and commuting costs can also be kept down. Twelve of the current 22 suppliers are Dorset-based and of the others nine are from neighbouring counties, employing Dorset residents to carry out the work where they can.