£3.5M pothole pay out shame

Conservative bosses running Lincolnshire County Council have come under fire, as it’s revealed that over £3.5m has been paid in compensation to drivers due to potholes.

This July, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the Grantham Journal has uncovered that our County Council spent £3,569,073.65 in
compensation to motorists over damage caused by potholes between January 2018 and December 2022.

Back in 2019, the Conservative Government removed £12m from Lincolnshire’s road budget. This raid on road cash means our county has missed out an almost £50m worth of highways funding. The number of repairs are going the wrong direction too - in 2022, 32,690 potholes were repaired, compared to 37,721 in 2021.

Lincoln’s Liberal Democrats are calling for the Government to restore highways funding for Lincolnshire - and invest more
in order to catch up with the backlog of repairs.

Local resident & campaigner James Brown, commented: “It’s simply beggars belief. In exactly the same way in which the Conservatives are mismanaging the country from Westminster, at County Hall things are just as bad. “I know first hand how expensive car repairs are, and
with the cost-of-living crisis, local people really can’t afford the cost of this Conservative neglect. They’d rather spend millions of taxpayer cash on paying drivers to fix their cars rather than fix our roads. “It’s time the Conservatives focussed on sorting out our roads rather than payouts.”