Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has announced an extra £500 million for local authorities to fix the country's potholes following a "decade of underinvestment" by the previous government. The increase is estimated to be enough to fix around seven million potholes.
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00:00So today we're announcing how we're going to allocate 1.6 billion pounds
00:05worth of funding to local councils so that they can fix potholes and do wider
00:11highways maintenance work. This represents a 50% increase on the amount
00:17of money that the Department for Transport, the previous government, gave
00:20to local councils last year. That's an extra 500 million pounds that the Labour
00:24government announced in the budget. This is a really significant investment. We
00:29know that Britain's roads have been plagued for far too long with potholes
00:33and so we want to take action and get these fixed. There's been a decade of
00:39underinvestment from the previous government and when we were in
00:43opposition the Labour Party was clear that we would make this a priority when
00:47we got into government. We announced an additional 500 million pounds. That's the
00:52equivalent to fixing an extra 7 million potholes and so we're very conscious
00:58that a lot of people are going to be driving home for Christmas this weekend.
01:02Many roads are a bit like an obstacle course with potholes and roadworks and
01:07so it's really critical that we get on and change people's experience of the
01:12roads and give people some hope that this time next year when they're going
01:15home for Christmas the roads will be in a better state.