GLOUCESTERSHIRE County Council has today, Friday, secured an additional £3,384,269 of government funding for the county’s roads.

The announcement brings a boost to Gloucestershire’s road repair programme.

The extra cash will be driven into ongoing pothole repair activity to improve the condition of the county’s roads funding additional pothole repair gangs, larger patching repairs and small sections of resurfacing.

All have the aim of improving roads, tackling potholes and repairing damaged sections of road before they get worse.

It will also fund the use of a JetPatcher, which blasts out hot road material at high speed to deliver a suitable repair in double quick time.

Alongside a wider programme of resurfacing and surface dressing activities across the county, this helps build a sustained campaign on road repair.

The extra cash follows a bid by the county council for a share of an additional £168 million made available nationwide for road repairs.

This brings the total additional investment into Gloucestershire’s roads this year to just over £20.5 million, which also includes the £3.3 million bad weather repair fund the county council received in March 2014 and £13.9 million of capital funding to invest in highways.

Vernon Smith, Gloucestershire County Council cabinet member for roads and flood, said, “I am sure Gloucestershire’s road users will join me in welcoming this additional money to help fix our roads.”

“As a council we are ploughing as much money as we can from our highways budget into road repair, which is the priority for highways right now.

“We are not complacent, and there is still a lot to do. Highway condition does not stay still, but we are putting in place the right tools and the right way of working to help better protect our roads.”

Updates on how many potholes are being fixed will be made available on the county council’s website.