Bristol potholes: Council to spend nearly £1m on repairs

Potholes across a city's road network are to get some attention thanks to nearly £1m in extra funding.

Bristol City Council is set to rubber-stamp spending the additional government money on junctions and roundabouts that need urgent repairs.

It comes just weeks after the city was named the worst in the country for potholes by an insurance company.

The money is part of a £200m increase in the Government's national Potholes Fund, that was announced in the budget.

The council's opposition Conservative group leader Mark Weston said: "News of these extra resources is particularly welcome at this time, given the very poor state of many of our roads.

"This problem has been growing worse and even led to one insurance survey recently to name Bristol as the Pothole Capital of England.

"Such a finding is not only embarrassing, it creates reputational damage to the city, but also represents a very real health and safety hazard for all road users."

Mr Weston added that whilst more work still needs to be done, the additional funding will enable urgent road repairs to take place in the very worst areas, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. 

A report to the Labour cabinet, which will meet on Tuesday to seek approval for the work, said Bristol's share of £990,000 was from a regional award of £2.8m made to the West of England Combined Authority (WECA), which also includes South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset councils.

It said potential roads in Bristol had been identified and would be prioritised based on their condition, volume of traffic and the number of defect repairs and complaints.

The report said Bristol City Council fixed more than 2,500 potholes a year.

"The work will be targeted at sites where there is significant potholing and where we are frequently having to carry out response repairs," it said.

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