I regularly report potholes, broken pavement slabs, faulty traffic lights etc to Lancashire County Council on the Love Clean Streets App – almost every time I leave the house!

But today I just want to highlight what I think is part of the systemic problem we have.

Today I have reported a massive pothole just off Bowerham roundabout that has been visibly deteriorating for months. But just a few weeks ago, Lancashire County Council came out to repair another one only ten feet away!

It can’t possibly be more financially viable to bring out highways officers twice to fill in one pothole each time, using the splash and dash technique which quickly erode, and are not a long-term solution anyway.

The degradation of roads and footpaths is not being taken seriously by central government and despite Lancashire County Council being Conservative controlled, I can recognise that they too have been starved of the necessary funding to keep roads in a decent condition.

The situation that we are in is even more frustrating considering that Rishi Sunak cancelled HS2 and pledged that “every single penny” of the funds would be invested in transport projects in the north and midlands, only for the Transport department last month to then announce £235m on fixing potholes in London using that very same funding – even having the gall to announce it as a “Network North” project!

Lancashire County Council use quite a strict prioritisation criteria for road resurfacing which is difficult to challenge, though I have been successful at doing this in the past. The County Council certainly need to broaden their standards to undertake repairs, such as halving the 40mm depth rule as Lancashire Labour pledged in their last manifesto in 2021 – but sadly were unsuccessful in gaining control of the county council to enact this.