'Pothole epidemic symbolic of our country falling apart under Tory neglect'

The crumbling of our highway network hasn’t happened overnight but is due to over a decade of underfunding.

In 2016, Labour warned of this crisis as the figures showed spending on road maintenance had been cut back then by more than a quarter.

Spending fell by 27 per cent under David Cameron’s reign from £1.5 billion in 2009-10 to £1.1bn back then.

The year-on-year cumulative effect of this underfunding has meant, instead of having to repair minor surface holes, we now have much larger holes – which have undermined the basic structure of the roads – needing comprehensive patching, at at least 10 times the cost and requiring more comprehensive traffic management causing increasing traffic disruption.

Once again, the government are too late to rescue the situation and unbelievably, we are almost halfway through the government’s £2.5bn roads repair rescue programme and there is no visibly improvement.

Allegedly £500 million a year has been allocated since 20/21 yet the situation is getting worse...where has all the money gone?

The government’s claim to fill 10m potholes at £50 each is just a joke. It shows they have no idea of the amount of work involved in each repair and the real cost. It is just another attention-grabbing headline.

According to government’s figures, £58m has been made available to the East Midlands in 2021-22 alone and Coun Ben Bradley, Nottinghamshire Council leader, boasted £9m was being spent in Nottinghamshire in 2021-22.

Again, I challenge where has this money been spent.

The Conservatives even had the gaul to put an extra 1 per cent levy on your council tax bill for highway maintenance.

Nottinghamshire languishes in the bottom third of country in the pothole repair league table and the fact is they are pouring your money down the drain as they pour more tarmac into the temporary repairs.

We haven’t even had any proper winter weather yet.

All these temporary repairs are just going to ‘pop out’ again under freeze thaw action and be washed away along with your money. It’s disgraceful.

Besides the damage being done to people’s car suspension and tyres, I have a genuine concern someone is going to get killed before too long in an unnecessary traffic accident.

You can see cars, motorbikes and cyclists swerving and dodging to avoid the potholes. How has it come to this?

All our infrastructure and services are falling apart as a result of Tory austerity.

They obviously haven’t heard the old saying ‘a stitch in time saves nine’.