BOOST: £140million for damaged roads
Roads hit by recent weather damage are to receive an extra £140million funding boost, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has confirmed.
Support for councils to fix carriageways struck by one of the worst winters on record will be increased by £36.5million to £80million, with an extra £103.5million also being made available to local authorities.
The figures mean that the government will have spent more than £1billion on road maintenance in 2013/14.
Mr McLoughlin said: “Having the right infrastructure in place to support businesses and hardworking people is a crucial part of our long-term economic plan.
“This extra money will help make a real difference to the millions of road users and local residents who rely on local roads, giving them safer and smoother journeys.”
“We have suffered from years of missed opportunities in highway maintenance and now is the time to take action to create resilience in the network.”
Malcolm Bingham, FTA
All additional funds will be allocated on a formula basis, and distributed to the majority of councils in England by the end of this week.
The Freight Transport Association (FTA) welcomed the decision, but urged authorities to scrutinise their whole life maintenance plans to create a more reliable road network.
Malcolm Bingham, Head of Road Network Management Policy at the FTA, said: “We have suffered from years of missed opportunities in highway maintenance and now is the time to take action to create resilience in the network – something that is vital to the economic future of the freight and logistics industry.”
