Councils 'Cannot Afford ?10bn Road Repairs'

[super jumbe]

The number of potholes on England and Wales' roads has increased dramatically - and councils say they cannot afford the ?10bn repair bill.
A new report reveals the shortfall in the highway maintenance budget received by local authorities from central Government in 2011 is ?895m, up 12% on last year.
The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) survey shows the total number of potholes filled in 2010-11 reached 2.2m, a 59% increase on the previous 12 months.
And local authorities estimated the one-off investment needed to get roads back into good condition was ?10.7bn.
AIA chairman Colin Loveday said: "Local authorities are doing what they can, but reactive maintenance - such as simply filling potholes when they appear - is at least 20 times more expensive than planned preventative maintenance."
The AIA report says most authorities in England and Wales were unable to repair the damage caused by the extreme cold snap at the start of 2010 before snow fell again at the end of the year.
In a separate survey of 15,000 AA members, 81% think the condition of roads has deteriorated in the last three years.
Scotland, Yorkshire and Humberside came out worst in the survey.
Edmund King, AA president, said: "We have to keep up the battle against this blight which damages cars and risks road safety, especially for those on two wheels.
"Cyclists, motorbike riders, drivers and pedestrians need to take care on our roads and pavements as inadvertently hitting a deep pothole can cause considerable injury or damage."
The Government announced an extra ?200m for pothole repair in the Budget.
Local transport minister Norman Baker said: "Despite the current severe fiscal restraints we have protected this year's funding for local road maintanence and are providing ?3bn to councils for road maintenance over the next four years.
"It, however, remains the responsibility of local councils to plan and manage their road maintenance programmes throughout the year, including appropriate winter resilience measures."

[super jumbe]

Diabolical we in UK have got the worse roads maintain then the third world, we pay road tax to whom.

1. If Portugal need a bailout in the region of ?7 billion don't pay it. Use it on the UK's core roads infrastructure.
2. Cut the foreign aid budget in half. Down from ?11 billion to ?5.5 billion. Use it to fund proper university education for degrees such as engineering and the sciences. We might come up with better materials and ways to design, build and maintain our roads. We would also have a legacy of highly skilled engineering and science which we could export.
3. Take all taxes that should be levied form publicly owned banks and put it into public transport say for the next ten to fifteen years.
4. Road Tax pays for the roads should we stop paying road tax?

[AbsoluteFire]

Diabolical we in UK have got the worse roads maintain then the third world, we pay road tax to whom.


4. Road Tax pays for the roads should we stop paying road tax?

No it doesn't and hasn't since 1937.
http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpap...snbt-01482.pdf

Like most other taxes it goes to central revenues and gets distributed along with everything else.

However the article states there is a shortfall of ?10bn so if it was linked to road tax we could all enjoy an increase of about ?32 to cover it.

BTW have you driven in ROI? the UK's roads were a breath of fresh air after that.

[thered]

Diabolical we in UK have got the worse roads maintain then the third world, we pay road tax to whom.

1. If Portugal need a bailout in the region of ?7 billion don't pay it. Use it on the UK's core roads infrastructure.
2. Cut the foreign aid budget in half. Down from ?11 billion to ?5.5 billion. Use it to fund proper university education for degrees such as engineering and the sciences. We might come up with better materials and ways to design, build and maintain our roads. We would also have a legacy of highly skilled engineering and science which we could export.
3. Take all taxes that should be levied form publicly owned banks and put it into public transport say for the next ten to fifteen years.
4. Road Tax pays for the roads should we stop paying road tax?

by rights yes i think there is only a small proportion of tax colected that goes on road maintenace anyway and some of these problems have been left to fester for years even when we were in the so called "boom"

if you think this country is bad now i dread to think what it will be like in 20 years

we have a growing population of which millions are pensioners, we have record young who do not work

we have as many people in government jobs (council,nhs, job centres police ect) than we have in the private sector

not to mention the people who are subbied to councils indirectly are still all payed for by private sector

in a sense you actually cost the tax payer less getting job seekers allowance than working for the local council or being a nurse or doctor on the NHS

every penny earned in this country comes from private sector either directly or indirectly

a doctor may pay a lot of tax on his ?80000 salary but he is only giving back a portion of what he has been given indirectly to the people who gave it in the first place

unless we get our private sector much bigger than our public sector we are very much on the road to ruin and we will soon be bust ourselves these cuts that are talked about are like taking a thimble of water from a sinking ship

[oneman]

Diabolical we in UK have got the worse roads maintain then the third world, we pay road tax to whom.

Having driven on many parts of Europe, US and asia I can tell you the main trunk roads in this country are some of the best and even the A and B roads are not that bad in comparison to most countries.

The ?10 billion would to be fix every pothole I believe which I think most people would agree is a waste of money.

The other problem is that roads are not built correctly in the first place in the last 30 years or so.