An East Devon MP has blasted the Government for neglecting rural communities
Richard Foord, MP for Honiton and Sidmouth, has criticised the Government for failing to fund councils fairly, following a wet winter that caused a plague of potholes.
Ahead of the new financial year commencing on Monday, April 6, Mr Foord says he is fed-up of Devon being near the bottom of the league table for the allocation of central government funding to local authorities.
At over 8,000 miles, Devon County Council is the local authority with the largest road network in the whole of the country.
Foord said: “For decades, Devon County Council has bumped along the bottom of the national funding league table, in terms of local authority financial settlements from Westminster.
“Successive governments have avoided funding rural council areas fairly. The year-on-year effect on services such as social care, education and highways are crippling.
“We must see an end to this unfair national approach that fails to take full account of additional costs of delivery in rural areas, that has left local roads closed for weeks.”
Mr Foord welcomed the Lib Dem-run Devon County Council trial this summer of a new “common sense” approach to filling potholes. This will involve contractors filling adjacent potholes, not only the safety defects that are reported by members of the public.
Mr Foord said: “The former Conservative administration’s inefficient approach of filling only the deepest potholes and ignoring adjacent holes has infuriated residents and has wasted resources, as teams have had to return to fix them at a later date.”
Research by the Rural Services Network reveals that councils in rural areas will receive a fraction of the budget uplift that urban councils will receive in the next financial year.
Foord said in Parliament on 11 February: “The Government announced … [in January] that they will be making available £7.3 billion for road maintenance over the next four years.
“This significant sum of money is not finding its way to Devon.”
Mr Foord has welcomed Devon County Council finding an extra £6m funding to help repair significant damage caused to Devon’s roads.
He pointed out that careful budget management by the new Liberal Democrat-led administration at Devon County Council has enabled a 20% uplift to Devon County Council’s highways budget. This will take the highways budget for 2026/27 to £36m – an increase of £6m on last year’s budget, set by the previous Conservative administration.
The uplift comes not a moment too soon, given reports of 9,700 potholes in February alone; well in excess of those reported in the previous February.
Share