31/03/04 - Extra £650,000 for road maintenance in South Lakeland

Today, Cumbria County Council’s South Lakeland Local Committee decided to spend an additional £650,000 raised from second homes on road maintenance.  The money available for road maintenance was actually £465,000 less than last year but the income from second homes will be used to fill that gap and enables additional spending to improve safety and quality of roads.

County Councillor Ian Stewart, Chair of South Lakeland Local Committee says,

“Road surface dressing has been taken out of the maintenance budget but all other areas of demand on the maintenance budget remain the same.  The money is used to pay for road lighting inspection and repair and basic road maintenance such as repairing potholes, renewing road markings and verge maintenance.  I am delighted that the extra money brought in through second homes has enabled us to increase this spending.  

Not only have we been able to increase spending on general maintenance but we also have around £200,000 still unallocated to target priority areas within the highways arena.  We will meet again in May to decide where the additional money will be focused”