It would take 185 years to repair all of our roads at current spending rates, Kirklees Council has revealed.
Highways officials have estimated there is a £76m backlog in repairs for so called ‘unclassified’ roads – minor roads for local traffic.
And they have confirmed if one of Kirklees’ unclassified roads was resurfaced today it would be 185 years before every other one in the borough was done and the first road was eligible to be tarmacked again.
Kirklees Council gets no direct funding from the government to fix unclassified roads – which make up 75% of our roads.
The shocking fact has been revealed amid news that Kirklees has been forced to adapt its road repair strategy so it doesn’t lose millions in government grants.
The council could lose £1m of its £5m annual funding from central government if it doesn’t keep all roads up to scratch.
Ironically, it will have to borrow £1.8m per year for three years to meet the standards.
Cabinet member for roads Clr Musarrat Khan said the new “early intervention” approach would bring more focus to partial repairs of moderately worn roads rather than full re-surfacing.
The change is designed to keep a larger proportion at an acceptable standard as opposed to spending millions more on completely relaying a smaller number.
There will be less re-surfacing of the borough’s worst roads.
Clr Khan said full resurfacing lasted 20 years but cost five times as much as partial resurfacing, which lasts 12 years.
“It makes economic sense to do it this way,” she said.
A spokesperson for Kirklees Highways, explained: “The grants received from Department for Transport are dependant upon the application of best practice. It is very important where funding is reducing that investment decisions are based upon intelligence and our programmes reflect this.”
Council leader Clr David Sheard said motorists were used as cash cows but then very little came back to the council to maintain roads and pavements.
He said: “There’s fuel tax, VAT on petrol, road tax and they recently increased insurance tax.
“All that is collected by central government and yet they expect us to repair the roads with the meagre parts we collect.
“I think it’s about time they gave some of the money back that they collected from motorists to spend on the roads.”
The council has said it will spend £250,000 of its £8.3m highways budget on pavements in 2017/18.
It comes after numerous incidents of people falling and injuring themselves on poor pavements.
Clr Khan admitted that the council had paid out £2m in personal injury claims over the past five years for incidents on pavements.
All UK roads, excluding motorways, fall into the following four categories: A roads – major roads intended to provide large-scale transport links within or between areas, B roads – roads intended to connect different areas, and to feed traffic between A roads and smaller roads on the network. Classified unnumbered, sometimes known as C roads – smaller roads often linking a housing estate or a village to the rest of the network and Unclassified – local roads intended for local traffic.
