Derbyshire Conservatives agreed to spend an additional £824,000 over the next 8 weeks to catch-up with the potholes created by the extreme rain and icy conditions over the winter. Additionally a further £1.8million winter repairs grant will be spent up to April that will ensure that our roads are back up to good standard. Derbyshire has also been successful in securing a further £4million, starting from April to ensure that the Labour underinvestment prior to 2009 is reversed. That means that from this winter to the end of the 2013/14 financial year we will have spent an additional £6.625million on our County’s Highways.

Labour, as ever on the back-foot, announced almost on the eve of Cabinet that they would commit an extra million to highway repairs but take it off our vitally important voluntary sector – effectively pulling the rug from under our communities and damaging their vital services.

Councillor Simon Spencer, Cabinet Member for Highways said, “We know that the condition of our roads, especially our rural roads is important to the people of Derbyshire and we have hired specialised contractors and equipment that will quickly, efficiently and sustainably repair potholes. We are already running double the number of teams to tackle the backlog created by the past winter and this will be in addition to that. We will get to every pothole that we can over the next 8 weeks, be they in a cul-de-sac or down an obscure rural road.”

Because Derbyshire Conservatives have run an efficient and cost-effective council we are able to meet this additional cost from our reserves – using them in the way they should be – to meet costs of things like emergency repairs.