THE repair bill to fix Barrow’s back streets has hit £12.6 million, a county council report has revealed.

It follows a review by highways officials of back streets in Barrow, Walney and Dalton.

Home to 320 back streets covering a total length of more than 20 miles –  fixing them all in one go is impossible due to limited highways funds.

The scale of the repairs is so large that the work is expected to take years.

Backstreets are ‘unclassified roads’ so do not get the maintenance attention ploughed into popular major roads used by lots of traffic.

The Hindpool area in the town centre has one of the costliest schemes.

A total of £125,000 would be needed to put right the back street between Rawlinson Street and Sutherland Street, and the back of Greengate Street.

Works needed at Marsh Street and Marsden Street, Barrow, are estimated at needing nearly £100,000, while £94,000 is needed at Broadway.

The area between Clarence Road and Victoria Avenue also needs work doing to the tune of £92,000.

One of the problems in Barrow is the Victorian sewers which can collapse -making resurfacing pointless if the underlying problems are not fixed first.

United Utilities, in charge of water and wastewater services, also faces a backlog of identical work in towns and cities throughout the north-west.

The report found: “United Utilities are consulted prior to any resurfacing work taking place on a back street. They then put a camera down the sewers and repair any defects in the back street prior to county council works taking place.”

The worst back streets were identified in a fact-finding survey this summer using Department for Transport criteria.

It involves ‘scoring’ those in need of priority attention first, with focus often give to back streets close to care homes, schools and major road routes, which are well used.

The report by county council highways chiefs will be discussed at a meeting of the Barrow Local Committee at the Nan Tait Centre on Monday, November 18.

Cllr Kevin Hamilton, the mayor of Barrow, chairs the committee and has previously called the back streets ’embarrassing’.

It is expected that a ‘priority’ list will be fixed in the coming year, although the amount of funding available for the job is not yet known.