A LOCAL council is calling for action to tackle the scourge of back street potholes.
Save Our Streets is a campaign launched by Barking and Dagenham Council that aims to convince the government to invest more money in local highway maintenance.
A National Audit Office report on local transport, published yesterday, warns that reduced funding for local authorities risks worsening highway quality.
The report also points out the huge burdens placed upon councils to invest in local transport, this is especially relevant to the Barking and Dagenham borough as relatively few of its roads are maintained by Transport for London.
The situation is worsened by the fact that many of Barking and Dagenham’s streets were built around the same time, and so are deteriorating together - creating a maintenance time bomb.
Last month the council announced a £6m programme of road re-surfacing covering 59 streets across the borough.
This two year programme comes on the back of a £22m Highways Improvement Programme which re-surfaced streets in nine different areas up to 2011.
But the reality is that these programmes have only scratched the surface.
Cllr Mick McCarthy, (pictured) Cabinet Member for Environment, said: “Our residents pay plenty of money out in road tax each year, and it’s about time they saw some of that cash being spent on improving their local streets. We also argue that it is more cost effective to invest in planned works rather than reactive maintenance, which is expensive and has to be re-done quickly.”
In the coming weeks the council plans to start letting residents know how they can back the pothole project.