Cabinet agrees extra £5.1m funding for road improvements

Today, the county council's cabinet approved a report highlighting its plan to spend Lancashire's share of the extra £200m of investment in roads announced in Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt's Spring Budget.

Cabinet agreed to commit £500k of this funding to the council's 'find and fix' programme, which uses 'jet patching', an innovative technique used to fix road surface defects more quickly than traditional methods.

Also included is the first of an extra tranche of surface dressing schemes made possible by the additional funding. Surface dressing significantly extends the life of a road surface by sealing it against water ingress, and this scheme in West Lancashire represents an investment of £265k. Further surface dressing schemes, alongside proposals for the remaining £3.5m not yet allocated, will go to cabinet in May.

Phil Durnell, director for highways and transport, said: "Extra funding for our roads is always welcome, and we already have some top priorities for how we'd like to invest part of it.

"The detailed surveys we carry out throughout the year mean that we have good information about the condition of our roads, and we're now working out a full programme which we'll asking councillors to agree when cabinet next meets in May."