Kent County Council has sent mixed messages by allocating almost half of the funds for its road transformation plan towards reactive repairs, despite a headline focus on preventative maintenance.
In a statement the council, which is led by the Reform UK party, criticised 'years of short-term, reactive funding' when announcing its new ‘Reforming Kent’s Roads’ campaign.
However, under its new investment campaign, it appears that only £10m has been allocated directly towards preventative measures to stop the formation of potholes.
The full £67m for this year is expected to be used as follows:
- £25m for renewing and reconstructing roads
- £10m specialist treatments to extend the life of our roads
- £11m for quick, efficient and permanent local repairs by KCC Highways teams
- £7m on addressing the most urgent repairs to keep the roads and paths safe
- £14.2m in additional funding from the Department for Transport (DfT) for a dedicated pothole and patching programme – a 65% increase on last year’s investment.
Even removing the £25m for reconstruction, this leaves just 48% on preventative maintenance, with the rest for defect repairs.
When approached by Highways, however, Kent CC’s cabinet member for highways and transport, Peter Osborne, said: 'We are frustrated that we are in the position of having to spend a large proportion of our money on reactive repairs due to years of underfunding in road maintenance by successive governments.
'The £7m figure relates to repairing hazardous potholes identified by scheduled inspections and inspecting customer pothole reports. The remaining funding is being used proactively to repair or improve roads so that hazardous potholes do not occur in the first place, thereby reducing the need for urgent reactive repairs.
'KCC’s priority with this new investment is to put a greater proportion of the money available towards larger areas of patching and surfacing to reduce the number of potholes forming in the future.'
Image credit: Shutterstock @Lucy M Ryan
