Politicians have raised concerns about a highways maintenance contract in Havering which has just been extended despite a number of alleged “performance failings”.

Marlborough Surfacing Limited's (MSL) contract with Havering included a commitment to invest £40 million in resurfacing the borough’s worst roads and pavements, with carriageway and footpaths maintenance.

However, some councillors - Gillian Ford, Ray Morgon, Linda Hawthorn, John Tyler, Graham Williamson and Linda Van den Hende - opposed the cabinet decision on April 11 to extend the contract with MSL.

In the papers produced for an overview and scrutiny board meeting on May 13, they alleged roads have "broken up in numerous places soon after resurfacing", speed bumps installed "of the wrong shape" and yellow lines of "poor quality" painted.

However, a vote at the meeting saw the cabinet’s original decision to extend the 2017 contract accepted, with a vote of eight votes to two and four abstentions.

Havering director of neighbourhoods Barry Francis said officers had been “satisfied” with the level of work and Marlborough had helped the council over the past year.

He said: “They very much invested in the borough, employ a lot of local residents, not just in the borough but across east London and buy from local businesses."

In the last financial year there were over 200 schemes completed, he said, and more than 2,000 reactive maintenance activities completed which could not have been picked up by the in-house team.

Cabinet member for environment, Cllr Osman Dervish, added that the council is "still in an uncertain period of time with regards to the Covid pandemic": "[We] know that we have a contractor that can deliver, has delivered and will continue to deliver for us in a very good way.”

Cllr Graham Williamson asked about the plan for assigning responsibility for potholes in the future.

He said: “Anecdotally, most of us as councillors, the main concern [we hear about] isn’t the resurfacing of roads, it’s the proliferation of potholes, and allegedly the poor patching up of those potholes that seem to be repeated and repeated.

“So rightly or wrongly, there seems to be concern out there about that.”

Cllr John Tyler noted some “extremely dangerous” potholes in his ward which had been "red-marked" for a number of weeks and not filled in.

Interim head of highways, traffic and parking Nicolina Cooper clarified this was not normal practice and they should have been filled within seven days.