Councils to get £140m to mend roads damaged by winter flood
COUNCILS will get an extra £140m to repair roads damaged by the recent floods, transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said yesterday.
The cash will be handed to most English councils by the end of the week, in the hope that the roads can be mended in time for the summer holidays.
The government distributed an extra £200m in 2011 to help local authorities whose roads were damaged by wet and freezing conditions – and said in a 2012 report that it would strive to prevent rather than fix potholes in future.
The DfT has pledged to spend £12bn on road resurfacing in the next parliament. The Highways Agency, which is responsible for major roads not maintained be local councils, saw its capital spending cut by 35 per cent in 2010.
Prime Minister David Cameron said: “It’s because of the difficult decisions we have made on public spending that we can afford to repair roads damaged by the severe weather as part of our long-term economic plan to secure Britain’s future.”