Dire warning for the state of Lincolnshire's roads from Grantham councillor

A senior councillor has warned that ‘winter is coming’ for our crumbling road network - labelling the situation as ‘dire’.

Councillor Richard Davies (Con, Grantham West), highways portfolio holder at Lincolnshire County Council, said the authority was continuing to press government for more money after the loss of £12 million to its roads maintenance funding.

The 25% loss was made up by the council using £2.3million of its own reserves and an extra increase in council tax for residents.

However, Coun Davies told Local Democracy Reporters: “We can’t continue to do that. Things are pretty dire.

“We are barely managing as it stands.

“The lack of investment from the national government is a disgrace and it’s appalling when you see where some of the money is being spent.

“The reality is unless we get that money, then we are going to move into a period of decline,” he said.

Asked if the council was keeping up with repairs to our roads so far this year, Coun Davies added: “We are holding the line at the moment as it were, but I’m afraid winter is coming.”

The authority has previously equated the lost money to about 72,000 potholes left unfilled, or 111 miles of road left unrepaired over a three year period.

In 2021, it repaired 45,073 individual potholes across 10,368 pothole reports.

However, the council says it had 15,144 reports in total with an average of seven potholes per site – a total of 106,008.

It means that two thirds of reported sites were fixed, but after investigation 42% of potholes that were found and needed to be filled were done by the end of 2021.

Some 1,819 reports were analysed and found to not need fixing following investigations.

The council continues to urge people to report highways maintenance issues via the FixMyStreet portal so that it can keep track of data more accurately.

Its “Fix Our Funds To Fix Our Roads” campaign website also continues to urge people to report issues to both the council as well as writing to MPs calling on them to lobby government bosses.