‘£12m isn’t enough to tackle our potholes...’
TOWN HALL CHIEFS SAY EXTRA GOVERNMENT CASH WON’T SOLVE CRUMBLING ROADS CRISIS:
GREATER Manchester will get an extra £12.4m cash injection to tackle potholes – but town hall chiefs say it’s not enough.
The funding will come from the £420m announced by the Chancellor in the autumn Budget, with Manchester, Stockport and Bolton to benefit from the biggest shares.
Across the north west, pothole funding amounts to £53m, which the government says brings the year’s total spending on the region’s roads up to £176m.
However, council leaders, many of whom have resorted to using one-off capital money for planned maintenance, say it’s still not enough to tackle the backlog created by eight years of underinvestment.
Pothole complaints rocketed by 70 per cent across Greater Manchester last year – as councils slashed £8m from their day-to-day road repair budgets.
A Freedom of Information request by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) shows nearly 40,000 complaints about potholes and damaged roads were received by town halls across the region last year – up from 22,800 – with numbers rising in all 10 boroughs.
At the same time, revenue budgets for road repairs fell by more than a quarter, with most councils spending less than a year earlier.
But Jesse Norman, roads minister, has insisted the winter funding injection will ‘keep drivers and cyclists safe.’ The government has committed a further £139m for north west road repairs, cycling and bus routes for 2019/20.
The M.E.N has asked all 10 councils which roads will benefit from the money, but none were able to provide that level of detail.
However, some Greater Manchester leaders warned it’s still not enough.
Last year, Manchester council received the most pothole complaints of all 10 authorities – more than 8,000 or a rise of nearly 40pc on the previous 12 months.
Meanwhile, its spending dropped steadily from £7m in 2014/15 to just more than £4.5m last year.
Angeliki Stogia, executive member for the environment, planning and transport, said they were pleased the government had ‘listened and responded’ to the need for road repair investment and that it would supplement the ongoing £100m being ploughed into one-off improvements over the next five years.
But she added a word of warning: “The major national challenge with potholes comes as a result of budget cuts which have been imposed since 2010 and this is something which we, like many other local authorities across the country, will be calling for government to do more to address going forward.
“Only consistent, sustainable long-term investment in our highways will help us achieve the much-needed improvements to our roads that we and Manchester residents want to see.”
A Tameside council spokesman echoed her concerns about the backlog. Vowing to tackle the roads ‘in greatest need,’ he added: “There does remain a substantial backlog of works, which is a legacy of national underinvestment over a number of years.”
In Rochdale, pothole complaints more than trebled last year.
Andrew Storey, head of highways for Rochdale council, said they were already investing £12m on resurfacing over the next twoand-a-half years, with 955 roads targeted. But he welcomed the extra funding, and said they would add new roads to the programme as a result.
Salford councilllor Roger Jones, executive support for transport, said the funding would benefit roads across the borough.
A spokesman for Bury council said they had not received confirmation of the funding and declined to comment further.
Mark Tilley, assistant director for infrastructure at Wigan council, welcomed the funding and said it would help them fix roads most in need of repair, adding: “Our highways network is the backbone of our economy and we are determined to keep in it a good condition for residents and businesses.”
Jesse Norman, roads minister, said: “Potholes are a huge problem for all road users, and too often we see issues occurring at the same place time after time.”