Buckinghamshire’s roads to benefit from extra investment of £5m

Road repairs: a ‘plane and patch’ team resurface a small section of road.

More than £1 million from Buckinghamshire County Council’s reserves are to be used to boost investment in the county’s roads.

With the extra investment the pot for the immediate highways repairs programme now totals £5m.

The money from the reserves has been combined with recent government grants, money earmarked for road repairs, and Member-devolved budgets to make up the £5m fund. The works will start immediately now the spend has been agreed.

The newly allocated money means that in 2018/19 a total of £20m is being invested in the county’s roads by the County Council.

On Thursday 26th April 2018 the Leader of Buckinghamshire County Council, Martin Tett, recommended county councillors approve the release of the £1.2m from reserves to boost funding for a ‘plane and patch’ programme and to add £480,000 from their own devolved budgets to this scheme.

Martin said: ‘Winter has taken a very heavy toll on the roads not just here but everywhere.

It’s a national problem. Quite frankly, as a country, we’ve under-invested in our roads over many decades and this leaves them vulnerable to very wet, cold winters.

It is the duty of this County Council to respond to what our residents want us to do which is why we have assembled this fund. The £5 million is on top of £15 million of capital funding we have already agreed to spend on the county’s roads, giving us a total of £20 million to spend on improving our roads for our residents.‘

Martin said the additional £5m county-wide -plane and patch- scheme would concentrate on resurfacing larger areas of damaged road surfaces – or ‘pothole farms’ – as well as continuing individual pothole repairs.

The additional £5m priority investment in the county’s road comprises:

• The £2m the County Council currently spends on reactive repairs during the year to ensure roads are safe for users. There has also been a £0.35m one-off gain within the TfB contract.
• Department for Transport awards totalling £0.966m made in December and March for repair of potholes.
• A fund of £0.48m devolved to County Councillors as a part of the revenue budget settlement for 2018-19 to fund locally important highways schemes.
• As a result of prudent financial management, £1.234m of funds from the General Fund reserve.