Roads in Lancashire get £45m boost in new Lancashire County Council budget

County Hall in Preston. Pic: Blog Preston

Lancashire’s roads are to get a £45m boost after the county council set its annual budget.

The extra cash – which comes on top of grants received from the government – will go into highway maintenance over the next three years.

The surprise announcement by the Conservative-run authority set the backdrop to the now perennial bidding war between political leaders about who would pour the most money into the county’s potholes – with the opposition Labour group claiming their promised £12m investment would be on top of anything the Tories had offered.   For their part, the Liberal Democrats proposed a £10m ”urgent highway repairs”.

The wrangle came during a more than five-hour budget meeting which saw councillors clash over a plethora of other priorities – including new schools, bus fare concessions, climate change, parking enforcement and Preston’s lucrative Corporation Street bus gate – in what is Lancashire County Council’s first budget to exceed a gross £2bn.