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Government announces how it will spend £50m pothole fund

However, road safety experts say this figure needs to be 240 times bigger to tackle dangerously poor road surfaces

Today the Department for Transport (DfT) announced how it will split a £50m annual pothole fund between more than 100 councils in England to repair 943,000 potholes from local roads over the next 12 months.

Campaigners from Cycling UK (formerly CTC, the national cycling charity), are concerned about the impact of potholes, particularly on cyclists, who are almost three times more likely to crash as a result of poor road surfaces.

They say the fund, which was originally announced in the 2014 Autumn Statement, is 240 times too small to adequately tackle the “lethal” dangers of poor road surfaces, however and say the government is “using a sticking plaster to mend a broken leg”.

Cyclist dies after hitting seven year old pothole

At the announcement today Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, said: “I know how important well-maintained roads are to people across the country. Almost every journey starts and ends on a local road, so the government is giving councils £250 million specifically to tackle the blight of potholes in their area.

“This is just one part of our unprecedented investment in local road maintenance over the next 5 years. We are giving a record £6 billion to local authorities in England that will improve journeys across the regions.”

However, Cycling UK’s Campaigns Coordinator, Sam Jones, says this is a fraction of what is needed to remove the danger of poorly-maintained roads on vulnerable road users.

He says: “The Asphalt Industry Alliance estimates we need £12billion to fix England and Wales’ roads: 240 times more than the £50million a year made available in the Government’s Pothole Action Fund. It’s the equivalent of using a sticking plaster to fix a broken leg.

“Potholes can be a lethal danger to cyclists and other vulnerable road users. In 2014, the police decided that a ‘poor or defective’ road surface contributed to almost three times more crashes involving pedal cyclists than it did in those involving cars.”

Jones points out 30 cyclists were killed or seriously injured in 2012 because of poorly maintained roads in England, Scotland and Wales, a figure that rose to 53 in 2014.

Cycling UK estimates there is an average of one defect for every 110m of road in the UK and that, with more than 245,000 miles of road, and a cost of £56 to repair each pothole, the £250m Pothole Action Fund is not enough.  

Jones adds: “It’s a typical smoke-and-mirrors exercise anyway, as this funding is coming out of the £6billion announced by the Coalition Government in December 2014 to tackle potholes on local authority roads.”

Cycling UK believes ongoing road maintenance is a more effective solution to the problem, which would the underlying causes of repeat potholes. 

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7 comments

Avatar
WolfieSmith | 7 years ago
0 likes

Good news. That's Lancashire's potholes dealt with then. And if leaves £500k left for the rest of the U.K.  

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Silver Rider | 7 years ago
1 like

Given the pattern of previous government handouts to local councils, I'd say commiserations to anyone living in the north or anywhere else not controlled by a Tory authority.

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ironmancole | 7 years ago
1 like

Perhaps litigation threat to your local council stating clearly that you consider the roads to be unfit and dangerous to use. Therefore, should they fail to act and you are injured, they should expect more than the usual pat on the head by way of compensation as they were warned and willfully failed to act.

Same applies if you report abuse for example and the authorities fail to intervene, someone somewhere is accountable, look at the Baby P fallout...quite right too.

Why should you expect less simply because it's a road, especially when we know it's a killer issue?!

Alternatively, let's divvy up the bill between motorists (majority of us after all) and give the road tax crowd the actual bill for the damage broken heart

Avatar
Butty | 7 years ago
2 likes

£53 should do for a bag of instant lay and a quick tamp down.

The KPI for holes filled will then be met and the Gov can crow that it has solved the problem.

The road will look like a patchwork quilt and the instant lay will quickly disintegrate and we are no further forward.

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Batchy | 7 years ago
4 likes

IMO 80% of holes in the roads are due to crappy road repairs due to utility companies digging them up. These private companies make huge profits but as usual it's the tax payer that foots the final bill. It should be mandatory that these  companies re do any dodgy surfaces-at their expense-that arise from their work within a given time frame.

Some of the £50m should be spent employing qualified clerks of work to ensure that any related work is carried out to a high specification.

In all of my 66years I cannot remember our roads being in such a delapidated state of repair. After all we are the 5th richest nation on Earth but try telling that to this mean, greedy bunch of Tories twats!

 

 

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brooksby | 7 years ago
1 like

So I guess the question is: £50m, 943000 potholes, does it cost more than £53 to properly fix a pothole? If no, then all well and good; if yes, then maybe some money could have been taken out of the HS2 budget... Hey, unless this was only ever intended as a gesture to shut people up for a while?

Avatar
Leviathan | 7 years ago
2 likes

So half a million per council should fix my street, but what about the rest of the country?

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