War declared on Chorley’s potholes as £1.6 million of repairs announced

Cllr Andrew Snowden, Lead Member for Highways and Transport at Lancashire County Council, has declared a war on the potholes of Chorley as the Conservative-led County Hall adds millions of pounds to its arsenal. He made the statement ahead of the March meeting of Cabinet, which is expected to approve a £1.6 million programme of resurfacing and major improvement works to Chorley’s roads.

At the same time a county-wide ‘fighting fund’ for pothole repairs, totalling over £10 million, was announced by County Hall. It will focus on faster responses to repairs and doing more patching up of sections of road rather than repairing individual potholes. It can be reasonably expected a good amount of this fund will also be spent in Chorley on reactive repairs.

Cllr Snowden said “This is good news for people across Chorley as the Conservatives deliver on our manifesto pledges, with scores of roads set to be resurfaced over the next 12months and much more money available for pothole repairs”.

“We pledged that if we took the Council from Labour we would make more money available for roads in Lancashire following years of neglect. Now, having been in power only a matter of months, we are reversing Labour’s cuts and have already committed an additional £10 million into roads – the vast majority to be spent over the coming 12 months. People pay their taxes and they want their roads repairing and we will be getting on with just that – a war on Chorley’s potholes”.

Amongst the roads to be resurfaced will be section of the A6 Bolton Road, including the section at the Myles Standish Way, stretches of the A49 Wigan Road, Great Greens Lane in Clayton, Sandy Lane Brinscall, Cotswold and Bredon Avenue and Bournes Row in Brindle.

There will be more roads to be resurfaced announced in the future and many roads not on the lists will be having significant patching-up work – so expect to see more hi-vis and hard hats across Chorley as the work begins in earnest when the weather improves.

Cllr Riggott, who represents Euxton, Bucksaw and Astley said “It is fantastic that this extra money has been approved by the County Council and is going to good use across Chorley. It was gutting to see Chorley Labour put politics first and refuse to vote for it”.

“I also I know residents will also appreciate the speedier and better quality pothole repairs as well. It wont be easy unpicking the underinvestment in highways by the last Labour Administration – but we are making a good start”.

The Council are also investing in new technology, by purchasing new machines the inject tarmac into potholes through a high velocity system, which is proven to improve the quality of the pothole repairs as well as make the whole process quicker.

Along with the road repairs there will be £84.000 on cycling and footpath improvements, £70,000  on drainage improvement schemes and £61,000 for Meadow Lane Railway Bridge.

The full list of roads in the schemes are below