COUNCILS like Warrington could repair 64,000 potholes with the funding lost from local road maintenance budgets this year.
This is the view of the Local Government Association (LGA) following analysis of the capital funding allocated to councils like Warrington Borough Council for local road maintenance by the Department for Transport this year.
Overall funding this year is £1.39 billion – down from £1.78 billion in 2020/21. This represents a £400 million (22 per cent) reduction on the year before.
With the average cost of repairing a pothole being just over £40, this is enough to carry out more than 9.5 million road repairs – the equivalent to 64,000 repairs in each local council area.
The LGA says fixing roads is a top priority for councils. Despite the pandemic, councils have been working hard to repair our roads, fixing a pothole every 19 seconds as well as supporting an increase in other infrastructure through temporary road measures
The Government’s £2.5 billion Pothole Repair Fund – announced in the Budget – will help councils to do more to maintain the roads this year and will go a long way to help tackling the local road repairs backlog.
But the LGA is urging the Government to also restore this highways maintenance funding so councils can continue to keep roads well maintained and address the almost £11 billion backlog in local road repairs.
Cllr David Renard, transport spokesperson for the LGA said: “The ability of councils to improve local transport connectivity and infrastructure, including upgrades to local bus, road and cycle infrastructure, is critical to government ambitions to level up the country and support our long-term economic recovery from the pandemic.
“Councils are on the side of motorists, and are working hard to keep our roads safe and resilient, repairing potholes as quickly as they can. However, it would take £11 billion and more than a decade for councils to clear the current local roads repair backlog, with the cancellation of important planned works risking extending this backlog further.
“With long-term and consistent investment in local road maintenance, councils can help government by embarking on the widespread improvement of our roads that is desperately needed, to the benefit of all road users up and down the country, including cyclists.”
3 Comments
This is the Conservative chaired LGA telling the truth about road repair funding, unlike the fairy stories Conservative candidates in Warrington made up around the chickenfeed our MP got from the pork barrel and the assertion, for which there is no evidence, that Conservative authorities are better at mending potholes.
If you don’t invest in your roads, they fall apart, it isn’t complicated. And, if you promise to freeze Council Tax and repay „debt”, otherwise knowing as selling your investments, you lose the investment income too, much less money is then available to keep roads up to scratch.
If they stop installing upside down potholes (speed bumps) they have all the money they need (also help if they fix some drains number of them are blocked flooding the roads leading to the roads degrading)
also help if they fix the pot holes the first time is done properly (seen some fixed more then 3-4 times because they are patching them instead of doing it right the first time)
And if they insisted on the potholes being properly repaired, the repairs would be more durable. The problem seems to be a lack of onsite inspection of the repair contractor’s work. It must be patently obvious contractors should not be left to police their own work.