Longer-term funding certainty benefits

摘要

Earlier this year the government made available two additional sums of money to help local authorities make repairs to roads: in January it launched the ￡183.5 million Severe Weather Recovery Scheme; and in March the Pothole Challenge Fund made an extra ￡168m available to English councils to bid for, to help them repair damaged roads.Including these two latest announcements, the current government has now made ￡767 million of extra funding available to help local authorities tackle additional road maintenance challenges. These have been aggravated by the effects of severe winter weather and flooding on many local roads which are losing their resilience to such events - the result of many years of chronic underfunding. This sum is nearly ￡120 million more than the total annual road structural budget shortfall in England (including London) reported in the AlA's ALARM Survey 2014.