Essential highway maintenance work is scheduled to take place throughout the week of Monday 20 April, as part of Rutland's annual surface dressing programme.

Surface dressing is cost effective treatment to restore and preserve the quality of local roads. It involves applying a protective layer of bitumen and compressed stone chippings along sections of the highway network, which then helps to make the roads waterproof and keeps them in a good condition for longer.

This is important to prevent the onset of more costly and dangerous road damage, caused over time by water, winter weather and general wear and tear. It also helps to restore a level of friction to the surface, to make the roads safer for motorists by improving the vehicles' resistance to skidding.

The Department for Transport has issued guidance confirming that essential road maintenance and safety improvements should continue throughout the current coronavirus pandemic period, subject to appropriate social distancing applying.

Surfacing dressing will take place at the following locations between Tuesday 21 and Friday 24 April, with maintenance crews adhering to social distancing guidelines by working two metres apart:

Tuesday 21 April

Lyddington

Wednesday 22 April

Cottesmore

Whissendine

Oakham (Braunston Road and Cold Overton Road)

Ketton

Friday 24 April

Tixover

Councillor Lucy Stephenson, Cabinet Member for Highways at Rutland County Council, said: "Surface dressing is a really important part of our highways maintenance programme. We do it for the simple reason that it helps to protect the road foundations. This reduces the need for more costly and disruptive maintenance work like having to remove and replace who sections of carriageway.

"We carry out surface dressing between April and September because the process needs warm, dry weather. The government has recognised that this kind of essential maintenance can't be delayed, which is why the works are allowed to take place during the current pandemic period. Even so, we have taken steps to make sure our contractors are following social distancing guidelines and some work to prepare the road in places like Barleythorpe has already been carried out by crews working two meters apart."

These works will be taking place under a mixture of convoy working and road closures.

Advisory speed limits of 15mph will be in place for two weeks where surface dressing work has been carried out.