Potholes and Road Maintenance Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Transport
Stephen Hepburn
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Potholes and Road Maintenance
Stephen Hepburn Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi
I entirely agree, and I was going to come on to that point in my speech a bit further down the road.
Today, our roads are unarguably in a state of disrepair that worsens by the day. A brief survey of the facts reveals that the challenges that we face will increase if the Government continue to ignore concerns.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing today’s debate. Does it not just show the mess the country is in that the Labour party has had to call a major parliamentary debate on potholes? Does it not also show what a false economy the Government’s seven years of austerity have been? They have made £200 million available to local councils to sort out potholes, when in the north-east alone we need £1 billion.
Yasmin Qureshi
I entirely agree, and I will touch on that point later.
The Local Government Association recently stated that we are facing a “roads crisis”. That is demonstrated by the worst findings that the LGA has found since it began measuring potholes in 2006. The Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring has found that pothole faults have worsened for the fourth consecutive quarter. An estimated 24,000 miles of road require repair in the next year, and 20% of local roads are thought likely to fail in the next five years.
Those issues are not being dealt with anywhere near fast enough, culminating in an extraordinary backlog of work that needs to be done. It is estimated that a one-time catch-up on that backlog would take 14 years to complete and cost £9.31 billion. That figure is alarming, but it will, of course, only get bigger if action is not taken right now.