WARRINGTON is to receive £161,000 from the Government’s £50 million Pothole Action Fund.
It is one of 22 councils across the North West to receive a share of £6.4 million to help remove about 121,000 potholes.
Some 3,008 potholes will be filled in Warrington.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: “I know how important well-maintained roads are to people across the North West. Almost every journey starts and ends on a local road, so the government is giving councils in the North West £6.4 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 five years. We are giving a record £625 million to local authorities in North West that will support the Northern Powerhouse and improve journeys for all.”
In total, the government is spending a record £6.1 billion nationwide on local highways maintenance between 2015/16 and 2020/21, giving councils long-term certainty for the first time to plan future work with the aim of preventing potholes and improving local roads, bridges and street lighting.
As part of this investment, the Pothole Action Fund will give local authorities in England £50 million a year, over the next five years, to help them tackle more than four million potholes. Funding is calculated according to the size of the local road network in the area.
3 Comments
I wonder how many of our current and increasing crop of potholes £161,000 will help to fill?
Quite a few and any extra money is always welcome, and it is in addition to the WBC £40 million road maintenance capital project currently underway. But as you say it is a never ending task.
It is an never ending task Paul because so many of the repairs carried out (or for which there is money to carry out) are in many instances not properly or fully completed. Leaving partially constructed repairs results in even larger areas of degradation (and cost) to be dealt with. The manner in which we deal with repairs of itself is a contributing factor to the increasing problem.
“Describing the £50million as a ‘drop in the ocean’, AA president Edmund King said: ‘It is a false economy to put off until tomorrow what everyone knows needs to be done now.’”