£3 million funding to tackle potholes after winter blast
Councils in the Black Country and Staffordshire have been handed an extra £3 million to tackle potholes on roads damaged in the freezing winter conditions.
The funding has been dished out by the Department for Transport.
Staffordshire has been given £2.2m, Dudley £330,000, Sandwell £310,000, Walsall £260,000 and Wolverhampton £240,000.
Neighbouring Birmingham was not given any money.
The cash is on top of £75m in government funding already given to councils this year, as well as a £46m boost for highways authorities announced just before Christmas.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: “People rely on good roads to get to work and to see friends or family.
“We have seen an unusually prolonged spell of freezing weather, which has caused damage to our local roads.
“We are giving councils even more funding to help repair their roads so all road users can enjoy their journeys without having to dodge potholes.”
Awarded
Transport for the West Midlands has also been awarded £1.7m of funding for ‘road condition monitoring innovations’.
In Staffordshire the county council has already pledged to spend an extra £5m on potholes and preventative treatments this year – on top of the £5m extra it spent last year.
Helen Fisher, Cabinet support member for highways and transport, said: “Good roads are important not only for getting us from A to B, but for continuing to grow a strong economy.
“In Staffordshire, we will have invested an extra £10m over two years both in tackling potholes and in preventative treatment to help stop them occurring in the first place.
“Last year this allowed us to fix around 35,000 potholes compared to 20,000 in a typical year.
“However, with a county the size of Staffordshire this is always going to be a challenge and the prolonged ice and even snow in March has created even more potholes, so I am pleased that the Government has recognised the impact of the recent severe weather by announcing this extra funding today.”
The Transport Secretary said the Government is also investing more than £900,000 to help councils ‘more efficiently manage and plan maintenance works’.
These trials are designed to help provide councils with data to enable them to repair potholes before they materialise – helping prevent further potholes and other road defects occurring over time.
