Our Cabinet will consider a report at a meeting on Wednesday 18 September 2024 which seeks formal approval to accept the funding.
The money, once accepted, will be spent on resurfacing roads and works to prevent potholes. This £3 million of funding is in addition to the base capital funding, we get from the Government each year for maintaining roads, pavements, structures and all other highways assets.
Our Cabinet Member for Highways Assets and Transport, Councillor Charlotte Cupit, said:
“Although we do welcome this additional money, it is so far less than we were given in total last year.
“We know that the condition of roads is rightly really important to residents and, particularly given the weather challenges we’ve faced over recent years, we are trying to maximise all funding we currently must have the biggest impact on permanent repairs and resurfacing.
“As we have been doing with the funding received last year, we will be focusing this money on the full resurfacing of as many sections of roads and pothole hotspots as we can.
“We are also disappointed that so far we have not heard if the current government will stick with the previous government’s plan to invest an extra £8.3 billion in roads across the country, but we will keep raising this with the new Government and Regional Mayor and pushing for this urgently needed additional funding for our highways so that we can have a significant impact on improving roads.”
The cabinet report is also seeking approval to continue the work that we have started on trialling new materials and machinery for repairing roads, which builds on the roadmender trial launched a few weeks ago.
We will work with other local authorities to share good practice and will use a new procurement system, Innovative Procurement System, to buy in more innovative maintenance options alongside the usual treatments already used on the county’s roads.