Lee Anderson column: Two JCB Pothole Pros, coming to a street near you
This is a promise delivered by Reform UK for the people of Nottinghamshire.
Reform said they would roll in the JCBs to help fix our roads and now they are here.
On May 6, the new JCB Pothole Pros were let loose onto the streets of Nottinghamshire.
Their first job was on Huthwaite Road in Sutton so I attended with Reform UK Sutton West councillor Terry Cox to mark the moment these machines were put to action to help us fix our roads.
These ground-breaking bits of kit can fix a pothole up to seven times faster than conventional methods.
In practice, this means that a JCB Pothole Pro is able to do seven months' work in just one month.
With two of them now operating on Nottinghamshire's roads, we can now cover what would usually be 14 months' worth of pothole repairs in just a single month.
So be on the lookout for these machines in Ashfield and Nottinghamshire as they will be coming to a street near you, clearing the backlog of potholes left by the previous Tory and Labour administrations at Nottinghamshire Council.
Coinciding with these new JCB Pothole Pros, the council is enacting an entirely new plan for road maintenance.
A record-breaking £181.25 million is being invested into our highways this financial year.
To help put that figure into perspective, the highways budget for the previous financial year set by the Tories before last years' local elections was just £72.7m.
We have pledged that all potholes across Nottinghamshire will be fixed within 72 hours and won't need revisiting for subsequent repairs.
There will be no more bodge-jobs that we have become used to seeing with the previous Tory and Labour administrations.
Ten extra highway crews are now in place to help tackle the backlog of potholes, one of which is fully dedicated to Ashfield.
For the first time in Nottinghamshire, hot box crews will be operating throughout the winter months.
Preventative measures have also been reintroduced to ensure that our roads do not get like this again.
The neglect we are used to with our roads has officially ended.
Previous Labour and Tory administrations left a lack of funding for road maintenance, resulting in hundreds of road surfaces going unrepaired for some time, creating a huge backlog.
No more fudging the budget to get out of repairs and preventative maintenance – residents deserve better.
They were more interested in wasting taxpayers' money on cycle lanes that almost nobody uses, such as the one the Tories installed on High Pavement in Sutton.
We are now turning things around so we can finally fix our roads.
It will certainly not be an overnight fix, but we are delivering on our promise to fix the roads in Ashfield and Nottinghamshire.
A big thanks to county council leader Mick Barton for delivering after decades of Labour and Tory neglect.