Stirling Council's Roads Maintenance Team is taking to the road with a very adaptable addition to the fleet - a new Velocity Jetpatcher.

The new machine will carryout a programme of long-term repairs to potholed and poor quality road surfaces and form part of the Council's rural roads quick response team.

The Jetpatcher, which was trialled by the Roads Maintenance Team, proved to be an extremely high quality cost-effective way of repairing and maintaining roads, car parks and footpaths.

The decision to purchase the vehicle outright will save the Council £80,000 per annum on hire costs that will be reinvested in road repairs.

Velocity Jetpatcher UK Ltd, who is the UK's and Western Europe's exclusive distributor of the Jetpatcher, has supplied the £155,000 machine.

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The machine includes a custom built chassis with a multi-purpose use, which as well as being used for filling potholes, can adapted into a gritter for winter maintenance service duties and a tipper truck for making deliveries to sites or transporting materials. Capable of spreading around 10 tonnes of stone chippings and bitumen mix per day, the mix can be spread over small and larger areas making it an ideal solution for emergency response or larger planned repair works.

This fast repair machine allows traffic to flow more quickly than more traditional road repair methods as vehicles can drive over the repair immediately after it has been laid.

Stirling Council Portfolio Holder with responsibility for Environment Services, Councillor Jim Thomson who was given a demonstration of the new machine in Callander recently said: "This new multi-purpose machine is a welcome resource in our long term plan to improve the road network. Road improvement is a top priority for communities and this Administration that's why we are investing heavily to improve the road network across the district of Stirling."

The Jetpatcher is a completely self-contained unit combining the resources of a truck, emulsion spray tanker, compressor and concrete saw. The machine and technique enables the maintenance teams to lay the new road repair mix with out having to excavate the pothole first and vary the depth of the repair from 5mm to 300 mm. The new material is applied and compacted layer by layer, which results in a very strong, long lasting repairs.

(GK/JM)