Greater long term funding for local highway maintenance will be needed if road networks are to be resilient to extreme weather events like Storm Desmond, industry commentators have warned.

Last weekend’s severe rainfall caused flooding and damage to rail and road infrastructure in North West England, particularly in Cumbria and Lancashire.

Chancellor George Osborne has since announced support of over £60M for the areas affected by the floods, which includes money to help councils assess the damage to the local highway network.

A spokesman for Lancashire County Council said it had already begun to assess the full impact, which includes damage to bridges and landslides affecting some roads that will be closed for months before repairs can take place.

The assessments will allow the Treasury to understand what additional local transport infrastructure funding could be provided to help repair damaged roads and bridges.

But a spokesperson for the Road Surface Treatments Association said: “Our local road network is vulnerable to these types of weather events. Government does not provide enough long term funding for councils to undertake proper programmes of preventative structural maintenance.”

Local Government Association’s environment spokesman Peter Box welcomed the Chancellor’s additional support funding, but warned: “It is going to be a long and costly recovery process and there is no doubt councils will need more support over the coming months.”

CIHT Board of Trustees member Matthew Lugg said: “Weather events like this are becoming more and more common in the UK and we need to get more advice to local authorities on how to deal with them.

“There must be careful consideration about the type of repairs carried out to mitigate against the same thing happening again.”

He also noted that the £250M fund for pothole repair announced in the recent Spending Review will help to boost revenue budgets for local highways, but added “I think we need more of that.”

Photo courtesy of Jean Frooms