Fuel duty pledge could tackle potholes

8/7/14

By Ian Barnsley

The Coalition could raise another £1 billion to devote on fixing the roads of England and Wales, if it have been to set aside an extra 2p a litre of the fuel duty it receives from the motoring public.

That is the view of the Regional Government Association (LGA), an organisation that represents over 370 regional authorities.

It believes investing the cash would be enough to repair all the potholes on the roads inside the next 10 years.

A current guarantee of millions of pounds of new funding to boost the condition of the road ne2rk is only enough to ‘patch up’; the method, and effectively quick of the money the councils would want to guarantee routes are in a very good situation for years to come, the LGA claims.

£12bn needed to repair road ne2rk

It says England and Wales need to have £12 billion to fully repair the road ne2rk, and the figure has risen by £1.5 billion in the final 12 months.

This is because of years of underfunding and some particularly cold and wet winters in the last couple of years.

The government announced in June that it was pumping an additional £168 million into the nation’;s road infrastructure to make needed repairs, and that the cash would be offered to 148 neighborhood authorities.

This has been described as the largest investment in the roads considering that the 1970s, and the Department for Transport expects the income to repair much more than 3 million potholes and crumbling road surfaces.

‘Roads in disrepair’;

Councils are “trapped in an endless cycle of patching up our deteriorating ne2rk”, according to the chairman of the LGA’;s Economy and Transport Board, Councillor Peter Box.

“Our roads are in such disrepair that it will now take a lot more than a decade and £12 billion to bring them up to scratch,” he said.

“Tackling this ever-increasing national repair bill need to be a priority and the government can do this by injecting an further £1 billion a year into roads upkeep – funded by investing 2 pence a litre from current fuel duty.

“Motorists spend billions to the Treasury every year in fuel duty when they fill up their automobile at the pumps only to then have to drive on roads that are decaying right after decades of underfunding.

“They deserve roads match for the 21st century,” Councillor Box mentioned.

Fuel duty pledge could tackle potholes