Cheshire East highways chiefs say their Government funding for highways maintenance has been slashed by almost £4 million.
CEC says it has been allocated £13 million from the government’s highways maintenance funding for next financial year.
That includes £5.7 million for potholes, which they say represents a drop of nearly £4 million or a 23% reduction compared with the current year.
Cabinet members say this and the freeze in funding between 2016/17 and 2019/20 is to blame for the deteriorating Cheshire East local road network.
Many angry drivers have recently slammed the authority for the state of the roads, with a harsh winter causing potholes and damage across the network.
Cllr Laura Crane, cabinet member for highways and waste, said: “We work hard to maintain the roads in Cheshire East, but we can only do what is affordable based on available funding.
“This reduction in government money puts further pressure on the council’s budget and will limit next year’s maintenance programme, their announcement comes just six weeks ahead of the new financial year, so plans have already begun for works that we now find are unaffordable.
“We know how important the condition of our road network is to our residents and to road users, whether they be drivers, cyclists or bus passengers.
“Please let me reassure you that we will continue to do what we can with the resources we have available.
“Using the online reporting tool (see link below), residents are encouraged to continue to let us know about potholes and other road defects – that way we can prioritise the work that needs to be done.”
Cllr Craig Browne, deputy leader of Cheshire East Council, said: “An assessment by our strategic highways team has shown that we need to be investing £27 million each year, just to keep the roads in their current state.
“So, the outcome of the DfT’s announcement, at £13 million, will inevitably be the further decline of our highways network.
“Our aim will always be to keep road users safe and we will always try to prioritise dangerous defects.
“However, until central government commits to provide an adequate level of funding, we will be unable to restore our road network to the condition that many residents reasonably expect.”
To report any road defects, including potholes, visit www.cheshireeasthighways.org/report-it-general.aspx or call 0300 123 5020.
Surely it’s affordable to fix the potholes along the A51 as this is a heavily trafficked road? The ones near Green Lane are getting that deep we’ll be able to visit China next week……
Plenty of money to waste on politically correct virtue signalling though.
If there cutting money , can somebody please explain what our ever rising car tax is being used on because it certainly isn’t the roads…dont see our car tax going down ?
Well if you did a more permanent repair in the first place, you would half your work load.
What sort of council sends a person out to only repair pot holes when they are the required depth, ignoring all the rest in the same part if the road that don’t quite measure up.
It would be interesting if CEC would tell us how much extra they were given by the Government last year to be spent on road repairs to help essential services to continue during Covid-19 lockdown, to be done when traffic movement was at reduced levels.