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Fixing borough’s roads would cost £135 million
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DONCASTER would need £135 million to bring its crumbling roads into an ‘acceptable’ state, say officials.
The figure is the second-highest estimate in Yorkshire, with only Sheffield suggesting a higher figure with £150 million.
Explaining the figure, director of Regeneration and Environment Peter Dale put the scale of the sum down to Doncaster’s status as the largest metropolitan borough in the country in terms of the space it covers.
He said: “Doncaster has one of the largest metropolitan road networks in the UK, responsible for over a thousand miles of roads.
“It is difficult to define exactly what an ‘acceptable state’ is.
“To put it very simply, we consider it to mean where the surface of the road is even and there are no more repairs needed for the time being.
“The cost to do this would be around £135 million determined in accordance with national guidelines and is sometimes referred to as the backlog of repairs which exist on the roads of all the Highway Authorities.”
But officials at the authority recently stated they had only around 60 potholes logged with the council for repair.
The Doncaster figure is almost 70 per cent higher than that in Leeds, where estimates put the figure at £80 million.
One Doncaster motorist, from Sprotbrough, said workmen had been to his street, Clifton Drive, in the last few weeks to repair potholes which had been in the road since last winter.
He said: “It took them a long time to get round to it, but I understand there must have been a lot of streets in the same situation as us. It has made a big difference and I think the road is good now.”
Work has also been ongoing this week to patch up Town Moor Avenue, said another motorist.
Local transport minister Norman Baker said the Government had given councils in Yorkshire £307 million to spend on road maintenance. The county also received just under £19 million to repair damage caused by the icy conditions during the cold winter of 2010.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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