Potholes: Britain's rotting roads to cost £14BILLION and take more than a decade to fix
Jeremy Hunt announced an additional £200million in funding to fix Britain's potholes
PA
Britain’s roads would cost£14billion to fix and take 11 years to complete, according to research.
The figure is £1.5billion more than last year’s estimate, showing an 11 per cent increase.
Last week, Jeremy Hunt revealed the Government will invest a further £200million allocation to fixing potholes across the UK.
At current there is already £500million allocated to the problem.
Britain’s roads would cost £14billion to fix and take 11 years to complete, according to research.
PA
But the funding is unlikely to go far, with 190,000 miles of road across the UK, the Government’s £700million only accounts for 5 per cent of the amount needed.
Chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, Rick Green, said: “We all appreciate that there are difficult choices to make with demands and pressures on the public purse coming from every area,
“But not investing in local road maintenance only leads to worsening conditions, which impact on other locally provided public services, a rising bill to fix the problem and more road user complaints.
“To really improve conditions and create a safe, resilient and sustainable network, what’s needed is a longer-term funding horizon from central Government with more highway budget ring-fencing.
Jeremy Hunt put an additional £200million into fixing Britain's potholes.
PA“This would help local authority engineers to plan effectively and implement more efficient works to protect and enhance the resilience of the local road network.”
Green welcomes Hunt’s boost in funding but said it was not enough and would “do little to improve overall structural conditions and stem further decline”.
The AIA found the UK saw a drop of four per cent last year on roads classified as “good”, nearly 8,000 fewer miles.
18 per cent of the local roads network has been classified being in a “poor condition”, nearly 37,000 miles.
They also predicted that these roads had less than five years remaining.
Elsewhere, it was revealed that the amount paid out in compensation for accidents and damage as a result of potholes had risen from £8.9million to £11.6million.
Potholes have also forces close to 2.7 million cars off the road in the last year.
The average driver had to fork out £127, which translates to £1.7billion nationally.