AN extra £9 million will be invested into fixing the resurfacing the county’s crumbling roads as the county council forge ahead with works in Stroud district.

The Conservative administration at Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) announced the latest package of funding in its budget proposal, passed on Wednesday.

It allocates an additional £3m on top of a further £6m already identified for the highways.

This will be paid for by moving extra funding from the council’s ‘rainy day’ transitional reserve budget into road repairs.

With the extra cash, its contractor Amey will be busy over the next year repairing different surfaces, potholes and pavements at different sites across Gloucestershire.

However, the council is still facing a massive £120m backlog of repairs in the county, with many areas becoming more and more ridden with potholes.

Cllr Vernon Smith, Tory cabinet member for highways at GCC, said: “£9m will be a massive boost to our plans to improve Gloucestershire roads.

“It will allow us to resurface more roads and pavements and fill more potholes than ever before.

“We’ve been working for years to beat the massive £120m backlog of road repairs that Labour and the Liberal Democrats left. This Conservative investment will deliver real and lasting improvement.”

It comes as work continues to fix two badly damaged main roads in Stroud. Last week the top of Paganhill Lane was resurfaced, and work on adjoining Farmhill Lane is due to be completed on Saturday, February 19.

Stroud MP Neil Carmichael was quick to praise the transformation, tweeting: “Good to see more road resurfacing in the Stroud Valleys - there is more to do but progress is underway.”

Speaking after the full council meeting on Wednesday, Lib Dem leader Paul Hodgkinson (pictured) argued the Conservatives had “failed to make investment into roads and pavements”.

Stroud News and Journal:

He has now said that if the Lib Dems win control of Shire Hall in May’s election they will take road repairs out of private hands and back into the public sector.

“Yesterday I gave notice that my group on the county council will look seriously at bringing back Gloucestershire's road repairs in house rather than having a private contractor do them if we take power following the local elections on May 4,” he said.

“It's about taking back control of our roads as I reckon the contractor hasn't delivered on fixing our highways and pavements.”

GGC’s overall budget for highways, trading standards, libraries, fire service and waste will also rise to £83.8 million.

However, this is the only segment of public services that will not see cuts over the next year.

To help pay for the investments, and to soften the blow of reduced government money, GCC has been forced to increase its share of council tax by the maximum amount of 3.99 per cent again.

Click here for more on GCC’s budget.