HAMPSHIRE’S road boss has blamed underfunding by successive governments for the poor state of county roads.

Councillor Rob Humby, deputy leader and executive member for economy, transport and environment at Hampshire County Council, was responding to a Chronicle story about a potholes on a road in Kings Worthy.

Cllr Humby said those holes in Nations Hill and Springvale Road, highlighted by villager Andrew Meadowcroft, would be fixed soon.

He said: “Following the wettest Autumn for 100 years, followed by record rainfall and storms in February, it’s a challenge dealing with the damage that’s been done to Hampshire’s 5,500 miles of road.

“The position is compounded by years of underfunding for highways maintenance by successive governments, which has led to a significant decline in the condition of the local road network despite us trying to plug the funding gap from local resources with an extra £10 million each year for our Operation Resilience programme. I believe we do a good job with the funding we have, the money only goes so far, and the recent wet weather and flooding has added significantly to the damage and deterioration of the roads.

“The last time flooding hit Hampshire in 2014, it caused an additional £40 million worth of damage to the network and all the indications are that this winter will have a similar impact Sometimes, we have to do temporary repairs to make the road safe. It is also very difficult to make an effective permanent repair in these wet conditions where groundwater levels are exceptional.

“The recent pre-patching work in Eastgate Street, Winchester, will be finished with a treatment to seal the surface and improve skid resistance – this treatment is weather dependent. Our highways teams will be repairing potholes in Nations Hill and Springvale Road in the next few weeks.

“The county council has recently committed an extra £5 million from local resources for highways maintenance in the next financial year which we will be using to blitz potholes and defects with find and fix gangs.

“However, this is a national problem, as reported in the Transport Select Committee’s report into local roads funding last June. This quoted the annual Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey which estimated that it would take 10 years to get local roads back into a reasonable ‘steady state’, and that that the cost of a one-time ‘catch up’ to deal with the maintenance backlog would cost £9.8 billion, approximately £70 million per authority in England and £32 million per London authority.”

Residents can report potholes and defects direct to us at: www.hants.gov.uk/transport/roadmaintenance/roadproblems