Council leader unhappy about pothole numbers

Devon County Council's leader has said he is not happy with the state of the county's roads.

"I don't think any resident of Devon could be happy with the state of the roads," Conservative James McInnes told BBC Radio Devon.

"We can't just sit back and let this happen any more."

He said in this financial year the council had put an extra £12m into highways maintenance, with "hopefully similar amounts" going in for "the next few years".

The council said in May that it was facing a backlog of repairs which would cost £200m to fix.

"I would be the first to say that the extra £12m is not the answer, an awful lot more money has to go in, but we are starting to see things improve," said Mr McInnes.

Between April and July there had been a 51% increase in the number of emergency potholes repaired compared with the same period last year, he said.

Mr McInnes said previous council administrations had been "looking after the most vulnerable in our society... but I think we'd all accept that we have to do something about the highways".

He urged people to report potholes on the Devon County Council website.

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