Proposals to double the County's road maintenance budget this year, and invest a further £120 million in our road network and local infrastructure, have been agreed by Conservative-led Oxfordshire County Council.
In a move welcomed by road users across the county, an additional £10 million worth of funding will be released to speed up repairs to the backlog of potholes and road damage sustained during a particularly harsh winter. The extra £10m will pay for 46 miles of surface improvements and 52,000 sqm of patching and will be on top of the £16 million the Council already spends on road maintenance (including carriageways and footpaths). Reactive pothole repairs will continue as usual.
Speaking after the announcement was made, Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Councillor Ian Hudspeth said: "The county’s extensive network of minor rural roads suffered badly during the freeze-thaw cycle of last winter. We know that road users are very concerned about the state of the roads in Oxfordshire and we have been looking at ways to tackle the problem. By massively increasing the amount of money we are spending on repairing the roads now we are signalling very clearly our intention to make big improvements, not just this year, but well into the future.
Indeed, the £120 million of capital spend agreed is the biggest council-funded investment ever locally and will be spent on improving highways and delivering other vital infrastructure projects over the next 10 years."
Oxfordshire's road network is around 3,000 miles long and is made up of: A roads (15%); B roads (10%), and C or unclassified roads (75%).
The high proportion of C and unclassified roads, which are often not built to modern standards and in rural locations, make highway maintenance in Oxfordshire a major challenge.
The County Council has dealt with more than 23,809 potholes since January 2018. This is 64% up on last year and equates to fixing an average of 3,968 potholes a month. Pothole fixing peaked in March with 5,146 being repaired.