THE government has given Wiltshire Council a £26m fund to help with resurfacing roads, new road markings, replacing traffic signs and signals and filling potholes.
The council was awarded £22,924,000 from the Government’s Highways Maintenance Fund for the highways maintenance in general and an additional £3,684,800 from the Department for Transport’s (DfT’s) Pothole Fund which will be used to target pothole hotspots around the county.
Cabinet member for transport Caroline Thomas said, “We welcome this maintenance funding from the DfT, which will be used to improve Wiltshire’s highways network and to make our roads and footpaths safer for all users – important contributions to the council’s business plan objective of having vibrant, well-connected communities.
“We’ve also received an extra £3.6m to tackle potholes, which we will use to target problem areas in the county. We are creating heatmaps of the areas with the worst pothole problems and using this data to identify roads in most need, those local pothole hotspots.
“Unfortunately, the extra funding won’t solve all the pothole issues in the county, but the additional treatment, combined with our scheduled resurfacing programme, will make a big difference to the safety and ride quality of Wiltshire’s roads.
“This year’s Highways Maintenance Fund is the second part of a three-year settlement and, as such, is the same as last year. Considering current inflationary pressures, this will present a challenge but, as always, we will look at efficient ways to spend the funds to improve and maintain Wiltshire’s highways network.
“We have filled 11,130 potholes and completed 28 major resurfacing projects so far this financial year, and we hope to do more this year. To supplement our own survey work, we ask anyone who spots a highways issue to report it using the MyWilts app or via our website.”
Pictured: Potholes being filled in Wiltshire.
