Kent pledges to spend an extra £6.2m on road repairs
Kent County Council says it will spend another £6.2 million pounds on improving the county's roads.
The pledge follows a cash boost from the government which is divided into £4m in the year 2013/2014 and £2.2m for 2014/2015. The funding was announced by the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin.
The local authority says the investment will reinforce its approach to road maintenance which was backed by the AA last week. The council's Cabinet agreed to spend an extra £6m on resurfacing and renewing roads six months ago, in addition to this year's £17m roads resurfacing budget.
Kent County Council said the county completed 14,885 jobs to repair potholes in 2012, with crews out on the county's roads fixing the holes within an average of 14 days. The local authority says that is a 44% improvement on the previous year.
– Bryan Sweetland, Kent County Council Cabinet Member for Roads“This is welcome funding that dovetails exactly with the new approach to maintaining our roads. Over the past two years or so, we invested significantly in repairing the network and this has then been protected by sealing and surfacing dressing the roads. This makes the roads last longer and is a better use of council taxpayers’ money than constantly being on the back foot having to repair roads, which only increases congestion and costs more money in the long term.”
“The condition of the roads is a top of motoring concern of our members. We have campaigned for many years to make sure councils have in place a system of roads inspection and repair that covers the frequency and method of inspection by road type; the type and size of defects that will be repaired; and the timeframe within which repairs will be completed once the council becomes aware of any defect. We therefore warmly welcome the transparent approach taken by Kent County Council to maintaining and improving its roads.
– Paul Watters, Head of Roads Policy at the Automobile Association“It is vital that Kent residents get value for money value from the multi-million pound investment in road repairs and renewal making council tax payers’ money go further whilst also improving road resilience and the driving experience. Kent’s roads maintenance programme is aimed at doing just this.”
