£48m extra cash for tackling Yorkshire’s pothole crisis

The Government has launched a new initiative to fix Britain's broken roads. This week,

the Transport Secretary has unveiled £4.8bn funding for 2025/26 for National Highways

to deliver critical road schemes and maintain motorways and major A-roads. From

mid-April, local authorities will start to receive their share of the Government’s record

£1.6bn highway maintenance funding, with a clear directive that it should be used to

tackle potholes. Councils will be held to account and must now publish how many

potholes they’ve filled to unlock the full allocation.

Figures from the RAC show that drivers encounter an average of six potholes per mile

in England and Wales, and pothole damage to cars costs an average £600 to fix.

According to the AA, fixing potholes is a priority for 96% of drivers.

Keir Mather, Labour MP for Selby and Kippax said “Drivers will welcome this

announcement, which will deliver meaningful action to tackle potholes in our area.”

“The government has stabilised our economy and unlocked much-needed investment to

fix our crumbling roads. It is now up to North Yorkshire Council to get to work on

delivering this.”

“I frequently hear from residents who are frustrated by the state of our roads. The last

thing drivers need are expensive repairs caused by the failure of our Conservative-run

local authority to upkeep our road network.”

“The last Conservative government did nothing to improve roads in Yorkshire and

instead, diverted funds which were allocated for high-speed rail in our area to patch up

roads in London. Under Labour, the government is taking a different approach - freezing

fuel duty for drivers in the Autumn Budget and investing significant sums in our

crumbling infrastructure."