Mayor provides extra £12m to tackle region's potholes

Six councils are to each get and extra £2m to help fill thousands of potholes and resurface roads across the West Midlands.

The £12m funding – enough to fill 132,000 potholes - will be shared between Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton for their current road maintenance and repair programmes. It follows a grant of £8m the Mayor secured from Government in February.

It will also pay for pioneering new low-carbon surface treatments, developed and tested in the West Midlands, will be applied to roads to extend their lifespan and reduce carbon emissions.  

Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, reallocated the cash to road repairs from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) fund.

The Mayor said: “I know that too many of our roads are blighted with deep potholes, huge cracks and craters – leaving motorists struggling with dangerous driving conditions and large repair bills.

“That’s why I decided to reallocate this money to road maintenance budgets. I know our councils will be able to get to work quickly to bring more roads up to scratch and improve journeys for every road user.”

The additional funding was approved at the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Board meeting on Friday (May 9), a decision that will need final sign off from the Department for Transport.

Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), which is part of the WMCA, is leading the way in trialing innovative, longer-lasting road surface materials through the award-winning Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads (CEDR).

As part of the mission to create smoother, longer-lasting, and lower carbon roads, several councils within the WMCA area are preparing to use their funding to trial these new materials. The aim is to enhance road quality for motorists, reduce carbon emissions and, by protecting the road from potholes and cracks, extend the lifespan of the highway network.

The six councils were initially allocated £24 million CRSTS money for road maintenance this year. Since then, the Mayor has secured an extra £20 million - doubling the road maintenance budgets for the six councils.

Birmingham City Council’s road repairs are funded through a separate private finance initiative process.