Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced funding to the sum of £27.4bn for the second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2) between 2020 and 2025, increasing spending from the previously stated £25.3bn.
This investment in the UK’s national roads will see the implementation of various schemes, such as a new, high-quality dual carriageway and two-mile tunnel at Stonehenge, as well as going ahead with the Lower Thames Crossing project.
Mr Sunak said, “I am announcing the biggest ever investment in strategic roads and motorways – over £27bn of tarmac. That will pay for over 20 connections to ports and airports, a hundred junctions, and over 4,000 miles of road.”
This comes as the chancellor also pledged an extra £2.5bn for road maintenance in the budget, meaning councils will receive an extra £500m a year over five years. This money will go towards filling millions of potholes every year, with the aim of addressing the country’s pothole problem.
As well as fixing up to 50 million potholes, the Treasury has said that the cash will also be used for preventative action. This will enable local authorities to undertake longer-term road resurfacing works, to keep potholes from appearing in the first place.
Authorities will be able to target specific places to benefit from this, ensuring that areas with the worst affected roads will be fixed first. This may be regions with more streets to look after than other areas, like the South West, the East of England, and the North West.
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