The Government has announced that an extra £140 million is being made available to help repair roads hit by weather damage in the recent floods.
Support for councils to fix the roads most damaged by severe weather will be increased by £36.5 million, to £80 million. This includes:
- £10 million extra funding for Somerset roads flood recovery announced on 6 March 2014
- £30 million announced by the Prime Minister on 12 February 2014 for local roads flood recovery
- £3.5 million funding from DfT as part of £7 million Department for Communities and Local Government floods recovery package announced on 17 January 2014
In addition, an extra £103.5 million is also being made available to all councils across England. This is on top of almost £900 million already made available for road maintenance this year, bringing total government investment allocated to road maintenance to more than £1 billion in 2013 to 2014.
Councils have a responsibility to maintain their roads properly, but the exceptional weather has caused significant additional damage, increasing the amount of damage to the local road network.
The additional money will be allocated on a formula basis, and will be distributed to the majority of councils in England by the end of this week, to ensure that they can make use of it as soon as possible and complete works before the summer holidays.
In order to qualify for the extra funding, local authorities will be required to publish information on their websites by the end of August 2014 showing where this money has been spent.
The Local Government Association welcomed the extra funding but said the final bill was expected to be more than £140m. According to the LGA, councils are already facing a £10.5bn shortfall to repair damaged roads and the problem has now been exacerbated by the adverse weather
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