Pothole repairs to be funded by £800,000 cash injection from Government

In a statement last week, West Berkshire Council said that an additional £798,707 had been received from the Department for Transport, to be earmarked for the repair of potholes.
According to the government department’s calculations of approximately £50 per repair, the cash will enable 15,000 potholes across the district to be fixed.
The money is in addition to £1.4m already received from government to fund general road repairs caused by flood damage across West Berkshire.
Pamela Bale, West Berkshire executive councillor for highways and transport (Con, Pangbourne), said that the funding would ensure a marked improvement in the quality of West Berkshire’s road network.
She said: “While the money is purely for potholes and not resurfacing, it will clearly have a positive impact on our roads in preparation for winter.”
Over the border, Hamp-shire’s roads also look set for improvement, after the county council secured more than £6m government funding from the national pothole funds.
The government has allocated more than £6m to the county council, as one of 148 authorities to apply for a share of the £168m pot to improve the county’s 5,280-mile network.
Authorities able to demonstrate good practice, investing in new technology and looking at new initiatives were awarded a larger amount of the funding, according to Hampshire County Council.
Reading West MP Alok Sharma, welcomed the extra funding, including an additional £163,833 to repair a total 3,000 potholes across the Reading borough.
He said: “Potholes can be dangerous to cyclists and pedestrians and can cause damage to cars that is very expensive to repair, so I am delighted that the government has awarded this significant extra funding to Reading Borough Council and West Berkshire Council, which will go a long way to dealing with the potholes that cause so much inconvenience to local people.”
Councils will also be required to publish quarterly updates on the number of potholes, or miles, or amount of resurfacing that has been undertaken in their area.
The Department for Transport estimates that over three million potholes countrywide will be repaired, in the government’s largest investment (£168m) in the UK’s roads since the 1970s.
Parliamentary legislation is in the pipeline to transform the Highways Agency into a government-owned company, in a move aimed at saving the taxpayer at least £2.6bn over the next 10 years.