Extra £5m planned for road repairs

The state of roads in Bracknell is "not what residents expect", Bracknell council says

Millions of pounds will be spent repairing a borough's roads as they are “not what residents expect", a council has said.

Bracknell Forest Council is proposing to spend £5m, over the next four years, on highways maintenance.

It comes months after it revealed more than one in ten of the borough’s roads needed resurfacing.

Councillor Kathryn Neil, who is responsible for spending at the authority, said the worsening state of roads was down to weather conditions.

The £5m is part of a proposed capital budget for infrastructure spending that will be voted on by the rest of the council at a meeting on 21 February.

Ms Neil said: “We recognise that the state of the roads due to the weather conditions over the last couple of years is not what we, or our residents, expect.

“We have therefore proposed an extra £5m on works to improve highways over the next four years.”

This budget is separate from the council’s revenue budget which is for day-to day spending.

Councillor Guy Gillbe, executive member for planning and transport, explained that inflation had meant repair costs had gone up, and that money from central government had not kept up with the increase.

Mr Gillbe said: “The cost of everything has obviously gone up and that includes maintenance on our road network.

“Over the last few years we’ve had many cold spells and we’ve had many warm spells and that produces a great demand on the road infrastructure."

Department for Transport previously said: "We're taking decisive action to fix potholes and resurface roads by investing an extra £8.3bn of redirected HS2 funding, the biggest ever funding increase for local road improvements and enough to resurface over 5,000 miles of roads across the country."