Lancashire County Council pledge to repair more potholes

An extra £3.6m of government funding has been awarded to Lancashire County Council, who are responsible for most of Lancashire's roads, have promised to make more road, drainage and street lighting improvements in 2024.

Lancashire County Council will be carrying out extra work to improve roads, drainage and streetlights in the New Year after receiving a windfall as part of the government's Network North transport plans.

On 4 October 2023, the government announced £8.3 billion of additional highways maintenance funding over the period 2023 to 2033 for highway maintenance funding. For the financial year 2023/24 a further £3.661m has been allocated for Lancashire in addition to the funds already approved for the Highway Block of the Capital Programme and has now been committed to this year's highways budget so that the council's highways team can hit the ground running in the New Year and carry out work in a number of critical areas.

An 'urgent decision' was made by the council's leader and cabinet member for highways and transport to add the new funding to the highways capital budget outside the usual cabinet decision-making process to ensure priority issues can begin being tackled as soon as possible.

County Councillor Rupert Swarbrick, cabinet member for highways and transport, said:

"The government announced in October that we were due to receive some extra funding for highways this year, and we're keen to put it to use as soon as possible to address a number of priorities which otherwise would have had to wait until the next financial year.

"The biggest portion of the funding is going towards drainage improvements which we're keen to complete as quickly as we can to reduce the risk of any severe wet weather damaging our infrastructure or people's property.

"We're also prioritising some of this funding for small resurfacing schemes where they're most urgently needed. We're targeting these according to our data on road condition, and where we're having to make repeat repairs to potholes, to ensure those problems are more permanently fixed.

"We're also putting some of the funding towards our ongoing programme of replacing aging streetlight columns, and a roundabout resurfacing scheme which we can now deliver thanks to these extra resources.

"We know that improving our roads is a top priority for Lancashire's residents and businesses, and I'm pleased that we're in a position to make this extra investment."