MORE funding to repair Hampshire's roads has been approved by Hampshire County Council. 

Hampshire County Council has decided to spend a further £7.5m a year for the next three years, recognising the importance of good roads for Hampshire residents.

Council leader Cllr Rob Humby said: “As we are all too aware, a challenging winter of prolonged wet and freezing weather, along with many years of insufficient national funding for highway maintenance, have taken their toll on the local road network in Hampshire, and indeed throughout the UK. This is a national crisis, which I and the Leaders of other South East councils are urging the Prime Minister to address.

“In the meantime, we currently spend around £13.5m on reactive pothole and road defect repairs each year and Hampshire’s highways teams are continuing to do an excellent job of repairing potholes, and other road defects, to keep our network in a safe and serviceable condition using the limited resources that they have.

"Hampshire is one of England’s largest counties with over 5,000 miles of roads and with widespread damage still evident, the need for structural repairs remains high. 

“There is no quick fix to this longstanding issue, but our teams are fixing road defects at a record rate. In June, nearly 10,000 potholes and other problems were repaired. But we must go further, faster, and I’m pleased that this £22.5m three-year programme will enable more localised road repairs across Hampshire.

"This additional funding will mean we can step up our resources so that road defects can be fixed more quickly by changing our approach to repairs and using new, innovative repair treatments and processes. 

“I would like to take this opportunity to ask residents to keep using the county council’s online system to report potholes so that they can be logged by our teams and scheduled for repair as soon as possible.”