Council Acts to Repair Ice-Ravaged Roads

12.00.00am GMT Wed 20th Jan 2010

Milton Keynes Council is making money available immediately to patch up roads damaged by two exceptionally cold winters.

Council Cabinet Member for Transport Councillor Alan Mallyon told the Citizen it is to spend an extra £250,000 filling in potholes across the borough.

The council has counted 3,000 potholes on urban and country routes and says the number is growing as the winter rolls on. Filling in a single pothole costs between £35 and £65.

The authority has already spent £900,000 from its pothole purse this year - equal to what it spent over the whole of the previous financial year. The emergency spending announced yesterday will add to the £1.1 million it estimated it would have allocated to such repairs by the end of March.

Councillor Mallyon said: "The extra money has not been earmarked to spend at some later date. It will be spent from Monday. I have had people of every political persuasion on to me about the problem."

The council has been under pressure since before Christmas to up its spending on repairs as the full effects of last winter's ice became clear and the recent long freeze has aggravated the problem even further.