The Prime Minister has demanded that councils must prove they are fixing potholes or they will lose the funding to mend the roads.
Sir Keir Starmer insisted that councils must “get on with the job” to fix the countries potholes and he announced a further £4.8 billion to get works done on major roads and the motorways.
Local council’s will start to receive their share of £1.6 billion in highway maintenance that was implemented by the Tories in 2024.
The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said, “The public deserves to know how their councils are improving their local roads, which is why they will have to show progress or risk losing 25% of their £500million funding boost.”
The government has said councils will now have to detail how many potholes they have fixed and how much money was spent and this report will have to be published by 30 June on their website.
The Prime Minister said, “British people are bored of seeing their politicians aimlessly pointing at potholes with no real plan to fix them.
“That ends with us.
“We’ve done our part by handing councils the cash and certainty they need – now it’s up to them to get on with the job, put that money to use and prove they’re delivering for their communities.”
Last May Labour slammed the Tories saying there is “more potholes” in the UK and there is “craters on the moon” as the repair backlog has now hit a staggering “£1.63 billion.”
The then Transport Secretary Mark Harper was being questioned in the House of Commons over the dire state of Britain’s roads.
Harper told MPs, “We’ve set out our plan very carefully – £8.3 billion of extra money to improve the quality of local roads.”
The Shadow Transport Minister Bill Esterson told MPs, “At the last transport questions, the Secretary of State suggested that drivers know what they’re getting with a Conservative Government.
“Well, drivers know one thing they’re getting from this Government: more potholes – 100 times as many as there are craters on the Moon.
“RAC patrols attended 33% more breakdowns related to poor road maintenance than in 2022, meanwhile, AA callouts were at a five-year high.
“The road repairs backlog has gone up to an eye-watering £16.3 billion – that’s far greater than his allocation of money from scrapping the northern leg of HS2.”
