'Record' shortfall in cash to fix South Yorkshire potholes
A new report says it would take £1.7 BILLION to repair all of Yorkshire's roads
Last updated 21st Mar 2023
A new report is warning of a record shortfall in pothole repair budgets – and says it would take 12 years and 1.7 BILLION pounds to repair all of Yorkshire’s roads.
Last week the chancellor announced just under £2.8m in his budget to help fix South Yorkshire’s potholes, but the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (Alarm) survey says it doesn’t scratch the surface.
It comes as you’ve been telling us about how bad some of the roads have become in Barnsley.
Our Regional Correspondent Rosanna Robins has been in the town taking a look:
Mechanic Mick from Mick’s Tyres in Darton told us he’s typically seeing around five people a day coming in with flat tyres and other issues caused by driving over bad roads – with the cost of repairs running into the hundreds.
“Ball joints, tracking, cracked wheels… it’s a lot worse than what you think,” he says.
“Some of the tyres are £250 a piece. Alignment, £90. Plus £45 per adjustment if it’s four-wheel alignment. It’s a dear do – it can be up to £1,000 (for the sake of) one corner.
“It’s getting miles worse, it’s on every corner. I’ve got a BMW and I do not use it, because it’s not worth me using it. Everybody in the area knows it’s a problem.”
One woman, who didn’t want to be named, got in touch to tell us how she’s submitted a compensation claim to Barnsley Council after damaging her car on a pothole on Greenspring Avenue and is waiting to hear back.
“I’m always coming into contact with potholes, if they’re not on my road they’re on the next road,” she said.
“My tyres constantly need pumping up which is a huge inconvenience especially when going to work.
“I was really annoyed when it happened. The council just fill and fill in the holes and it’s really bumpy along Greenspring Avenue because of all the potholes they’ve filled in. The road needs a full resurface.”
Barnsley Council says it does spend around £15m a year on repairing roads and took the decision to put an extra £2m into that in this year’s budget.
“What I would say to residents is you can play your part by reporting any potholes you come across,” says Cllr James Higginbottom, cabinet member for Highways.
“We’re currently running at around about 98 per cent of the emergency potholes get repaired within 24 hours. We’ve put extra teams on and they’re working through the week and at weekends.
“We always need more resources, that’s the bottom line of it. Every local authority in the country has got a maintenance backlog. We will use our allocation of (the government’s) funding as best we can to fix Barnsley’s roads.”
It comes as Councils in England and Wales said they only received two-thirds of what they needed during the current financial year, to stop local roads further deteriorating.
This resulted in a total carriageway maintenance budget shortfall of £1.3 billion according to the Alarm survey.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: "We are investing more than £5 billion from 2020 to 2025 into local highways maintenance, and recently announced an extra £200m at the Budget to fix millions of potholes a year.
"This will help make journeys smoother and safer for all, repair dozens of bridges, and resurface roads up and down the country."