"It won't touch the sides": Ashfield council leader slams £200m investment for pothole repairs

In his Spring Budget this week, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt revealed the Government will invest £200m in filling potholes across the UK to sort out Britain’s roads – including more than £3.3m for Nottinghamshire.

However, Coun Jason Zadrozny, Ashfield Council leader and leader of the opposition Independent Alliance at Nottinghamshire Council, which is responsible for the county highways, claims the move is nothing more than a “gimmick” and that the money is just 1.6 per cent of what is needed to fix the county’s broken roads and pavements.

He said: “To celebrate this announcement as any sort of good news is a joke.

“It won’t even touch the sides and is considerably less than we proposed only last month, when the Independent Alliance opposition group put in a budget proposal that would have led to £2.9m additional spending this year in every borough and district in the county.

“This is timed just before the local elections to mask years of real term cuts in funding to fix potholes.”

He went on to suggest it would cost the whole £200m to fix the state of roads in Nottinghamshire alone.

Coun Ben Bradley, Nottinghamshire Council leader and member for Mansfield North, as well as Mansfield MP, agreed more money would be beneficial, but said it is important to “use what we have wisely”.

He said: “It should be obviously to any sensible person that any level of extra money for our roads is helpful.

“We could spend hundreds of millions more on Nottinghamshire’s roads and I’ve been the first to accept that recent poor weather has really made a mess of a lot of our road network.

“In reality though, although we might love to spend hundreds of millions, we’re never likely to have that amount of money, which is why it’s important that we use what we have wisely.

“We know our roads need a lot of work and investment, and most other parts of the country are no different.

“It’s good that Government have recognised a need for that investment, and while clearly the extra £3.3m of funding is not going to fix all our problems, it does represent almost a 10% increase in our Highways Budget.

“It’s something to welcome, and we’ll use it to help roll out the new plans we have in place to improve our roads.”

The county council has been fighting a battle with potholes, with the recent cold and wet weather worsening the situation across the county, but says it is doing all it can.