In the past 12 months, North Yorkshire County Council has spent more than £10m to repair about 320,000 potholes as part of its continuing drive to maintain and improve the county’s roads network.
Last year, the county council was awarded £5.176m from the Government’s £200m pothole challenge fund to be spent before April 2015 on road repairs and maintenance. The council supplemented this with more than £5m from its reserves, enabling it to double the length of road resurfaced and number of potholes repaired.
- County Council has invested an extra £500,000 on top of what was originally planned
- Total expenditure is now £10.7m
- The total resurfaced is 200km
- An estimated 320,000 potholes have been repaired against an original plan of 200,000
The £10.7m was in addition to the council’s £31m capital maintenance budget for 2014/15.
There is no further pothole challenge funding in this financial year, but the county council has supplemented its £29m annual maintenance budget with a further £5m from its reserves.
As many potholes in rural North Yorkshire come about as a result of damage to the edge of the road, it was decided that rather than just patch these potholes the council would undertake much more cost-efficient repairs by resurfacing the road, thus filling existing holes and preventing others forming.
County Councillor Don Mackenzie, executive member for highways, said:
We are pleased to have been able to spend this additional money to make a real difference on important routes for many of our communities and are grateful for the government support. It has made a small but significant contribution to our programme. However, we do still face a backlog of about £300m in highway maintenance.
A full list of all the work funded by the £10.7m can be found at www.northyorks.gov.uk/potholefund
