Government gives £2.8m to fill area’s potholes
ALMOST £3m has been handed to Greater Manchester to patch up more than 60,000 potholes.
The government cash - from a £100m pot - will be used to fill and repair roads left damaged by an ‘unusually prolonged spell of freezing weather’ during Storm Emma and last month’s ‘Beast from the East’. Greater Manchester has been given £2.8m.
The Department for Transport said the £100m will fix almost two million potholes and protect roads from more bad weather, with more than 60,000 defects being sorted in Greater Manchester.
The move comes just days after a report found a fifth of local roads in England and Wales were in a poor condition and warned that councils faced a funding black hole to maintain carriageways.
Bolton will get £318,470; Bury £200,241, Manchester £438,956; Oldham £269,365; Rochdale £247,494; Salford £268,154; Stockport £297,212; Tameside £228,036; Trafford £244,119 Wigan £369,956.
The money is on top of £75m in government funding already given to councils, including town halls in Greater Manchester, from a ‘pothole action fund’ earlier this year - as well as a £46m boost announced just before Christmas.
Councils across the region are already putting and huge amounts of cash into road repairs including in Oldham, where £6m is being spent this year; Trafford, where £14m is planned over three years; and Manchester, where £100m is due to be spent over five years.
MPs, however, welcomed the latest pot of cash, but some warned it will do little.
Ashton-under-Lyne MP Angela Rayner said: “While any new money to repair potholes on north west roads is welcome, the amount of cash is tiny compared to what is needed after many years of cuts.”
Martin Tett, the Local Government Association’s transport spokesman, said: “It is positive that the government has listened to councils and made more funding available to help repair local roads which have been affected by the recent severe winter weather. However, the funding announced today will provide just over one per cent of what is needed to tackle our current £9.3bn local roads repair backlog.”
He warned that councils are likely to need more support from the government as the full extent of the repairs needed after the freezing weather becomes clear.