THE budget for road repairs in Glasgow will be doubled to £12 million following public pressure in the wake of what the council describes as its "most damaging winter in over a decade".
Council leaders said freezing temperatures in December - the lowest in 12 years - combined with an extended period of heavy persistent rain and high traffic volumes had resulted in some 7000 pothole reports in the first two months of 2023 alone.
Repairs, resurfacing and other measures have been ongoing as part of the council’s usual maintenance programme that prioritises the most seriously affected road surfaces across the city.
READ MORE: Shortfall in pothole repairs budget hits new high
However, the road maintenance budget will be doubled from £6 million to £12m to fund a significant increase in work to fix potholes and other road faults in all 23 council wards before the end of the 2023/24 financial year.
The council said the enhanced budget will repair and maintain almost 300,000 square metres of road surface in 130 city streets that have been assessed by the council’s roads team as also requiring attention.
Councillor Ruairi Kelly, City Convener for Neighbourhood Services, said allocating extra funding to road maintenance is the correct approach given the shift in road condition in recent months.
Mr Kelly said: “The winter is always a challenging time for road maintenance and the combined impact of low temperatures, rain and snow plays havoc with the condition of Glasgow’s roads and footways.
"Now is the time of year we need to catch up on that work.
“As a road user myself I can see what other motorists and cyclists see and I share their frustration at the increase in the number and size of potholes and the need for often significant repairs to damaged surfaces.
"This is a bread and butter issue the public tells us it wants prioritised.
"That’s why we are doubling the maintenance budget this year and ensuring that residents see marked improvements in their neighbourhoods and across the whole city.
“This investment means that over the next year we can target more of those areas where issues have emerged and we’ve already identified where those problems are. Glasgow’s roads have some of the highest usage in the country, which means more damage and more repairs required.
“While we are committed to improving local infrastructure I’ll also be making the case for a funding mechanisms which better recognises the national significance of Glasgow’s road network to the Scotland’s overall prosperity.”
READ MORE: Scotland's pothole hotspots revealed
The additional £6m of funding has been reallocated on a temporary basis from the Neighbourhood Infrastructure Improvement Fund, which is intended to provide £1m for each of the city’s 23 council wards to spend on local priorities.
The council is also working to develop new processes that will enable local communities to actively participate in the decisions taken in relation to the fund at the city’s 23 area partnerships.
At this stage, a significant majority of the cash has still to be earmarked for local projects and will remain unspent in this financial year.
READ MORE: Extra 225 breakdowns a day due to potholes, says AA
The council said that the £6m which has been reallocated to roads maintenance will be restored to the Neighbourhood Infrastructure Improvement Fund in future years.
The additional funding for roads will be spent on repairs, resurfacing and other interventions such as surface dressing, which help to eliminate cracks in the road surface that are vulnerable to the impact of the weather and traffic.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here