An MP has welcomed the announcement that Oxfordshire is to get £2.6million for road improvement projects.
The Government has redirected £8billion funding for the cancelled northern leg of the HS2 rail project to resurface more than 5,000 miles of road across the country.
The Department of Transport has allocated £743million for the south east of England with Oxfordshire receiving one of the largest shares.
The county is due to receive more than £5million extra funding for road repairs by 2025.
Conservative Witney and West Oxfordshire MP Robert Courts said: "These new announcements will mean £2,629,000 of extra investment for Oxfordshire’s roads this year and the same sum again the following year.
"Further to this, over the next 10-year period Oxfordshire will receive a total of £82,340,000 in funding to tackle potholes, which has been redirected from HS2 – the biggest ever uplift in funding for local road improvements."
He added: "I strongly feel that in a rural constituency like West Oxfordshire residents rightly expect that the roads, which provide vital links between communities, are maintained to a good and safe standard.
“Planning the maintenance of road surfaces here in West Oxfordshire is the responsibility of Oxfordshire County council (OCC), not central Government.
“I have been arguing for sometime that a twin-pronged approach is needed: more funding from central Government - on a longer-term basis rather than one-offs to enable better planning - and more scrutiny over councils to ensure funding is used effectively.
“This massive increase in funding from the Government must be used to invest in long-term repairs to our roads, and not on OCC’s own ideological agenda to get motorists off the roads.
“I am pleased that these announcements also include, for the first time, a condition that local authorities publish their resurfacing plans every quarter. “
Article and image first published by the Witney Gazette on Wednesday 22nd November 2023.
