Shropshire Council welcomes additional £11.6m of Government pothole funding

Shropshire Council has been awarded £11.6m from the Department for Transport (DfT) to help repair potholes and protect the county’s roads from future severe weather.

The money forms part of £1.7 billion awarded to councils for 2020/21, through the newly created Transport Infrastructure Investment Fund.

The funding will be added to the council’s 2020/21 highways budget of £12.6m, giving a total of £24m for this financial year.

The additional award will enable Shropshire Council to continue to fix more potholes  and other defects whilst undertaking more preventative work to stop potholes forming in the first place.

Since 1 April the council has repaired over 6,000 potholes on Shropshire’s roads as the council’s highways team takes advantage of the reduction in traffic during the coronavirus lockdown, and the warmer weather. Works have included traditional two-man gangs but plus new innovative technologies such as texpatching*, thermal patching, and jet patching, where local conditions have enabled their use

Steve Davenport, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways and transport, said:

“We are delighted that the Government has recognised that Shropshire’s roads require increased central investment and we are pleased to have received this additional £11.6m of funding. We fully understand the frustrations of our residents concerning the number of potholes which have occurred on our roads this winter. This additional funding will enable us to continue our priority to repair them most effectively and help us prevent them for reoccurring next winter by protecting our roads against future damage.

“I am grateful to all the hard work that our highways team and contractors have been undertaking to repair our roads during the coronavirus lockdown and we will continue with this good work to deliver better quality of roads for all our Shropshire communities.”

Further information

1) Shropshire Council has been awarded £11,570,000 for its pothole fund by the Department for Transport on top of its capital allocation of £12,660,000, making a totoal of £24.2 million for the financial year 2020/21

2) Potholes are categorised according to a national standard of acceptable road surface quality.

The severity of the pothole and, therefore, the urgency of treating it, is determined by the risk it poses to road users. Factors to be taken into account include location; size and depth of pothole; traffic type, speed and volume; road type; alignment and visibility and also the position in relation to road width.

3)*About Texpatching. Under this new process, potholes are cleaned out, filled with a unique material called Texpatch, then covered with a neat, square patch. This will provide a longer-lasting, smoother, neater finish compared to traditional pothole repairs, and seals up all joints, which should result in an increased life span for the repair.

4) To report a pothole, click here to visit the Shropshire Council website.

5) If a pothole has been outlined with paint it has already been inspected and programmed to be fixed, so doesn’t need to be reported.

6) Shropshire Council isn’t responsible for potholes on the following roads:

• Private roads – these are the responsibility of residents of each private road.
• M54, A5, A49 (south of Shrewsbury); A458 (Shrewsbury to Welshpool); A483 (Llanymynech to Oswestry) — these are the responsibility of Highways England
• Roads on private land, eg. retail parks.