The Government has announced how further funding is be allocated to councils to tackle potholes – but the Local Government Association (LGA) has warned that it is nowhere near enough. Lib Dem Group Leader on the LGA, Gerald Vernon Jackson: “It’s like the school bully taking a pound off you but only giving five pence back”.

Councils need more than 230 times the amount to cover the £11.8 billion cost to properly maintain our roads. An  LGA poll shows that 83 per cent of the population would support a small amount of the existing billions they pay the Treasury each year in fuel duty being reinvested to help councils bring our roads up to scratch.

“Walsall’s allocation of £140,000 will hardly scratch the surface” said Lib Dem Cllr Ian Shires. “It would probably take all that and more just to sort the roads in my Ward (Willenhall North) let alone the rest of the Borough” added Ian.

Walsall’s £140,000 puts the council bottom but one in the amounts being paid out across the West Midlands, only Wolverhampton gets less with £110,000. Top of the funding list is Dudley with £172,000 followed by Sandwell with £160,000, then comes Coventry with 154,000 then comes Walsall with £140,000. Wolverhampton is last with £110,000.

Key findings of the 2016 ALARM survey, an annual survey of highway bosses in England and Wales carried out by the Ashpalt Industry Alliance, are:

1. The one-off cost of repairing all our roads would be £11.8 billion compared with £10.5 billion in 2012 Councils fixed almost 2 million potholes in the last 12 months.
2. On average each local authority fixed 12,000 potholes last year It would take 14 years to clear the repair backlog in England and Wales and it would take 65 years to resurface our entire road network. The average highway maintenance budget per local authority has fallen by 16 per cent. The average English authority faces an average £69 million estimated one-time cost to brings its road up to a reasonable condition. –