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Manchester City Council to spend extra £100m on mending potholes and road maintenance over five years (9 January 2017)

Date: 09/01/2017
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Manchester City Council to spend extra £100m on mending potholes and road maintenance over five years

Manchester City Council has announced an additional £100 million is to be invested in maintaining the city’s roads over the next five years.

The additional funding will bring roads to “a good standard” and keep them there, said the council – the busiest roads in Manchester will be brought back to “as new” condition and will help support the city's future growth.

The majority of the funding – £80m – will be devoted to a comprehensive programme of resurfacing and other maintenance designed to tackle potholes and stay on top of repairs.

A further £20m will support other roads and maintenance schemes designed to help support the city's continuing growth.

The money is in addition to £2 million a year being added to the council's highways budget. The funding was added as a one-off in the budget for 2016-2017, but has now been made permanent. The council says that, taken together, the funding increases are set to deliver significant improvements to the city's roads.

Executive Member for the Environment, Councillor Rosa Battle, said:

“Manchester residents have told us that improvements to the city’s roads are among their top priorities, which is why we are taking comprehensive action to ensure their condition gets better and stays better.

"We have listened to people who say they are fed up with potholes and put together this major investment programme to address this.

“We will ensure this work is phased over a period of time to start delivering improvements as soon as possible, while minimising disruption – this is about making things better for drivers.

"We recognise the vital importance of improving the condition of our roads to support the city’s continuing economic and residential growth and ensure it remains a great place to live.

“That's why there are no reductions to highway maintenance in our proposed budget and, instead, we are planning this major investment programme –which will significantly reduce the blight of potholes across the city over time and ensure high quality roads.”

The council added that funding pressures since 2010 following deep cuts to the council's government funding had contributed to a gradual deterioration of some of the city's roads, with around 5% of Manchester's roads currently assessed as being in need of priority resurfacing work. Unless action is taken, it is estimated that this figure could rise to as high as 62% within five years.

Reactive maintenance currently costs the council £3m annually – a bill which is expected to rise to £7m per year by 2021, unless action is taken. The proposed investment programme would eventually halve the council’s pothole repair bill to around £1.5m per year.

The long-term, phased investment is being proposed under the Council's Capital Programme as part of the Council's budget setting process.

If it is agreed, work to secure a contractor to carry out the schemes will begin, with the first improvements works expected to start later this year.

The full details of the programme will be developed in the coming weeks.

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