Lincolnshire’s highways team plans to build on its successes from 2023.
Cllr Richard Davies, executive member for highways, said: “Over the past year, our team has delivered a huge amount of work across the county and we’re seeing a real turn of the corner in what we’re doing from a highways perspective.
“In fact, 2023 was a really productive year for us, despite the cost pressures our highways team faced thanks to inflation and reduced funding from Central Government.
“Not only did we fill over 110,000 potholes last year, but we also rebuilt 77 miles of footpath and 224 miles of road, while cleaning nearly over 192,000 drains. These excellent results are down to lots of hard work and the clever execution of work programmes by our dedicated crews.
“But, even though what we achieved is terrific, we want to do even more this year.”
Following on from a successful 2023. the county council expects to achieve the following in 2024:
- Fix around 110,500 potholes
- Repair 290 miles of roads
- Rebuild 101 miles of footpaths
- Clean around 200,000 drains
Cllr Davies added: “I absolutely do not want to send mixed messages. Many of our roads are in a dire state. In fact, we’d need £400 million to tackle the existing issues we know of and bring all of our roads and pavements up to standard.
“That’s why our focus for 2024 is to build upon 2023’s successes by filling the same amount of, if not more, potholes while repairing even more roads and footpaths and cleaning even more drains.
“In a nutshell, we want to keep chipping away at the number of roads and footpaths that are in disrepair throughout the county.
“Although there’s no quick and easy fix for the highways issues we face, we can continue taking some cautious steps in the right directions thanks to an additional £262 million in highways funding allocated to us by the DfT.”
In February 2024, the current Government announced a pledge to use reallocated HS2 funding to further increase the county’s highways allocation by £262 million over seven years.
Prior to that, in late 2023, the DfT also allocated Lincolnshire County Council a total of £9.8 million in extra highways maintenance funding over two years, through to March 2025.
Cllr Davies continued: “This seven-year commitment for roughly £37 million a year extra will mean a 30-40% increase in our maintenance budget over that time. That will most definitely allow us to build on the work we're currently doing.
“We very much look forward to understanding more about this funding in the coming months, including whether it will be guaranteed following the next general election. From there, we’ll look forward to having our local MPs on side so we can make the most of what's being offered.”
Lincolnshire County Council launched its ‘Fix our funding to fix our roads’ campaign in late 2021, which saw a major push by county councillors for Central Government to reinstate stripped back roads funding. The successful initiative encouraged residents to write to their local MPs, demanding fairer funding for Lincolnshire’s roads. Executive councillors also wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport and lobbied to Central Government for a change in highways funding allocations.
Cllr Martin Hill, Leader of Lincolnshire County Council, said: "It's quite refreshing to see Lincolnshire not getting overlooked, especially since we’ve been fighting for fairer roads funding for years.
“Our hope now is that whoever wins the next general election follows through on the commitment of boosting our highways funding by £262 million over the next seven years. We are in desperate need of this extra allocation and it would most definitely be put to good use towards improving the state of our vast road network.
"We’re a large rural county and our residents place a huge amount of importance on well-maintained roads – something we’re doing our absolute best to deliver.”
For more information about what the county council’s highways team is doing, visit www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/highways.