Councillor claims Derbyshire council has to answer for potholes despite ‘mammoth task’

A Liberal Democrat Derbyshire County Councillor has shared his concerns about the ‘mammoth task’ of repairing potholes following a Labour Minister’s criticism of the Conservative-controlled county council’s handling of road maintenance.

Cllr Barry Bingham believes road maintenance for councils nationwide has been under-funded by the Government for many years but Conservative-led Derbyshire County Council does still have to answer to what he believes have been unsatisfactory repairs that need redoing.

The Staveley North and Whittington division councillor has been responding to a visit to Whittington, in Chesterfield, from the Labour Minister for the Future of Roads, Lilian Greenwood, with Chesterfield Labour MP Toby Perkins and the division’s Labour candidate Allan Ogle this month to examine potholes in advance of the May 1st county council elections.

Cllr Bingham said: “Local Government at local level, at county level, has been under-funded over many years – grossly under-funded over many years. That is one thing that I think is important to say.

“It’s also down to the controlling group. the leader of the council, or the lead member to respond to why the potholes have not been done satisfactorily to people’s satisfaction.”

The Staveley North and Whittington division councillor says he has been driven around to identify potholes and claims he has reported them in some cases several times and even though the council has repaired them within weeks they have deteriorated and he has had to report them again.

East Midlands Labour Party also claims the breakdown and insurance company RAC has dubbed Derbyshire the worst county in the country for potholes, and the RAC recently claimed only a fraction of Derbyshire County Council’s roads received any form of maintenance during 2023-2024.

Cllr Bingham added: “It has been under-funded for many years and this is the result but not all councils around the country have had really dire reports. I do realise it’s a mammoth task to repair the roads for any county council. It’s a nightmare.”

He also raised the issue of how much the council may have to pay out in compensation claims concerning damage to vehicles from potholes.

Derbyshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways Assets and Transport, Cllr Charlotte Cupit, has stated that the council has been targeting repairs with high-tech systems and that there is a need for more Government investment.

Cllr Cupit has said the authority is doing everything it can to improve roads with ‘actions, not words’ while criticising Government funding after Ms Greenwood’s claim that the Conservative council ‘should hang their heads in shame’ over the condition of the area’s roads.

The council highways cabinet member welcomed a share of Government funding towards highways maintenance and potholes – under a nationwide £1.6bn package announced in December to fix potholes – but she stressed there is still a lot more investment needed given the damage to the county’s roads.

Derbyshire is set to benefit from a £37.5m allocation via the new East Midlands Combined County Authority to go on road repairs and it will also benefit from a share of £66m of City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements funding also to be received through EMCCA.

Ms Greenwood has also argued the council had carried out patch-and-mend, piecemeal repairs instead of long-term preventative measures and when there is poor infrastructure it is a barrier to growth.

The Labour candidate for Staveley North and Whittington, Allan Ogle, has conducted his own survey in which 96 per cent of 121 respondents stated they encountered potholes on a daily basis, with 72 per cent saying potholes had damaged their vehicles in the past year, and 27 per cent saying they or someone they knew had suffered an accident or injury due to the state of the roads.

He said the potholes are dangerous and that following his survey he claims one of the biggest impacts upon residents has been the added strain to the cost of living with car maintenance problems due to potholes.

Cllr Cupit said the council is doing everything it can to invest locally and maximise funding and resources to improve roads and it is trying to focus on permanent and lasting repairs and resurfacing where possible while using new technology and also doing smaller-scale resurfacing of pothole hotspots.

In the last year the council has planned out and resurfaced over 200 pothole hotspots and over the last six months it has done over 3,000 smaller resurfacing patches on over 300 streets across the county, according to Cllr Cupit.

Cllr Cupit said the council will also be carrying out patch resurfacing on at least 500 streets over the next three months on top of its usual large scale road reconstruction and resurfacing and preventative surface-dressing and sealing work.

In May, 2023, the council confirmed it had fixed as many as 42,036 potholes between January and May, 2023, and claimed a national survey revealed the local authority had fixed more potholes than any other highways authority in the country.

Cllr Cupit said the council organised a record resurfacing programme last year and it is planning for more record resurfacing year this year and it will keep focusing on ‘action rather than words’ to resurface roads.

The highways cabinet member has previously argued Derbyshire has a diverse geography and a huge highways network with 3,500 miles of road, 2,794 miles of footpaths, 1,182 highways bridges and many other assets, and it has also had to contend with more extreme weather conditions causing potholes, carriageway deterioration and a high number of landslips.