Lincolnshire will receive the maximum amount of funding for road maintenance in 2016/17 after being named as one of the best performing highways authorities in the country.
This comes despite criticism from road safety groups about the perceived poor state of roads in the county and a rise in deaths and accidents in the early part of this year.
Lincolnshire, along with Durham, scored highly against all the set criteria for highways authorities, and as such have been awarded £1.7 million in funding.
Cllr Richard Davies, in a statement on the Lincolnshire County Council website, said “We try to make the very most of our funding from the Government by fixing roads at the right time.
“When a road deteriorates beyond a certain point, it can actually end up costing a lot more to restore it to a good condition. As part of this, our staff also consider the safety of motorists, and it’s down to their hard work and innovation that we have achieved the maximum funding available.”
However, John Siddle, from the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership, dismissed the impact of the increased funding as “short-term measures” during an interview with LSJ News, saying “it won’t rectify all of the faults with all of the roads in Lincolnshire.”
This follows Mr Siddle publishing an open letter in the Lincolnshire Echo on Saturday, April 9th, criticising the County Council for “the catastrophically bad state that this county’s roads have been allowed to fall into over the past few years.”
Mr Siddle gave a damning indictment of the roads of Lincolnshire, saying that “we are now saddled with third world roads”, citing the increase in deaths and accidents as evidence of the County Council’s failures in road safety and maintenance.