THE deputy leader of Cumbria County Council has called for a more long-term approach to highways funding from the Government.

Councillor Peter Thornton said current Government funding for work on building, maintaining and improving roads came out in “bits and pieces” which made it difficult to plan effectively how to develop the county’s infrastructure.

Speaking at a virtual meeting of the council’s cabinet, the finance chief said the council could do more if it had a better idea of how much money was coming and when.

“One of the problems is that we get our money in a fairly random way,” he said.

“We get bits and pieces, sometimes quite large lumps, often wrapped up in all kinds of conditions and with very short timescales in which to spend it but it’s not the most efficient way of funding our highways.

“I went to a meeting earlier this year with the Department for Transport with quite a number of council leaders and deputy leaders and they all had one message for the Government and that was to give us proper funding settlements on a three-year rolling basis so we know what we’ve got.

“Stop giving us little bits and pieces all of the time; every time the Government gets some heat over potholes, out comes a few more millions.

“Fund us properly, on the long term, in a way that we can plan better, and we’ll give you even better value.”

Councillor Thornton did concede that there had been an acceptance of the message at the meeting with the Government but said the pandemic had escalated rapidly since then.

He also defended the condition of the county’s roads and the work done by the council’s workers to maintain and improve them within their budget.

He said: “Our highways staff do a fantastic job and our highways are in excellent condition. Clearly there are areas that get problems but overall, having travelled over quite a lot of the world, I think our highways match any of them so thanks to all our staff for what they do with the cash they get.”

The points were backed up by councillors Patricia Bell and Anne Burns, with the former saying the Government needed to better understand the additional challenges faced while trying to improve the county’s narrow roads.